World Usability Day 2008 Wrap Up
World Usability Day 2008 was on November 13, 2008 and was represented in Indiana by the Indiana Usability Professional Association. The Center for Information and Communication Sciences at Ball State University has a big part in the success of this day. The students volunteer their time, along with staff and faculty that put many hours into making sure it is a success. The main contact from the center is Kirsten Smith, who is also a member of the Indiana UPA. Kirsten heads up the Software Testing Institute and gets them heavily involved in the planning process. Since I am the graduate assistant for Kirsten I was able to get involved and in the process learned a great deal about usability.
The day was started with an interactive exercise where each table came up with original ideas for usability within a vehicle. This really opened up everybody's mind to what usability is since the day was focused on transportation. The next part of the day included three sessions at the same time. I was able to sit in on a discussion about eye tracking software and how it is used to make websites more user friendly. This discussion was lead by Jackie Martinsen of CMD at Ball State University.
After lunch there was a session on navigation controls in the cockpit of an airplane and air traffic controllers by Steve Landry of Purdue University. This session talked about where the industry was going and how focused they were on usability in the future design. The last session was with Deborah Bakowski of Delphi. This session has been discussed in Dr. Jay Gillette's live web logging of the event.
The day was full of very informative sessions that really opened me up to what usability is and how it can be applied in different industries. We can no longer ignore usability because users are starting to demand intuitive design that focuses on human factors. I encourage you to attend next years session of World Usability Day for its great learning experience for professionals and students alike.