World Usability Day is a day to celebrate improvements in making digital technology accessible to everyone. It is also a day to make plans for further increasing access. Read on to learn how and why was the day started.
World Usability Day is observed on every second Thursday in November (Photo credit: Freepik)
New Delhi: Usability is the degree to which specific user groups can quickly learn or operate a system or product under stated conditions. The goal of usability is to create systems that are efficient, effective, valuable, and easy to use. Usability helps developers make better products by considering what users think and experience. Usability is part of every step in the development process.
The Usability Professionals Association (UPA) founded World Usability Day, or Make Things Easier Day, in 2005. It has been celebrated every year since then on the second Thursday in November. This year, it will be observed on Thursday, November 14.
In this article, let us look at when and why the day was started.
World Usability Day 2024: When and why was the day started?
World Usability Day, also known as Make Things Easier Day, began in 2005. This event highlights the importance of usability, user-centered design, and everyone’s role in asking for better products every year.
The day originated from a conversation in the fall of 2004 between UPA board members Elizabeth Rosenzweig and Nigel Bevan. They collaborated with the UPA board to create World Usability Day, and Elizabeth Rosenzweig continued to lead the effort over the years.
Today, World Usability Day takes place in more than 140 countries and has involved over 2,50,000 people, positively impacting local communities. The event has helped introduce the concepts of user experience and usability to areas where they were not well known before, such as Eastern Europe, including Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey.
Now, the World Usability Initiative runs World Usability Day. The organizers work with well-known professional groups like SIGCHI, HCII, PLAIN, and IFIP to form the World Usability Initiative (WUI). This group collaborates with the United Nations to address human factors related to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
What Elizabeth Rosenzweig said?
Elizabeth Rosenzweig said, “World Usability Day was established to focus people on the problems and subsequent solutions related to usability. We want to raise people’s awareness of how much these problems impact all of us. If we can get thousands of people on the planet to focus on one thing for one day, we can accomplish something big. It only takes one day to change someone’s point of view, or to light a fire that can burn for years.”
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