World Usability Day which is also known as Make Things Easier Day is annually celebrated on every second Thursday of November which means this year it falls on 10th November.
This day occurs annually to promote the values of usability, usability engineering, user-centered design, universal usability, and every user's responsibility to ask for things that work better.
The goal of the day is to raise standards so that technology works to harness human potential. The day adopts a different theme each year. Organizations, groups, or individuals are encouraged to hold events to mark the day, optionally according to that year's theme.
| Event | World Usability Day |
|---|---|
| Date | November 10, 2022 |
| Day | Thursday |
| Significance | The day promotes the values of usability |
| Observed by | World wide |
World Usability Day History:
The principles of user experience may be traced all the way back to Ancient Greece. There is evidence that Greek civilizations used ergonomic concepts to build their instruments and workspaces as early as the 5th century B.C. However, the profession of usability as we know it largely started in the 1980s. Many methods have their roots in the earlier fields of Ergonomics and Human Factors which began near the beginning of the 20th century and had a strong influence through World War II. Henry Dreyfuss, an American industrial engineer who published "Designing for People" in 1955, which pretty much sums up user experience design in a nutshell, is another major figure in the history of user experience design.
The concept of usability has its more recent and direct origins in the falling prices of computers in the 1980s, when for the first time it was feasible for many employees to have their own personal computer. In the 80s, most computer users had practically no, or only basic, training on operating systems and applications software. Usability thus became a key goal for the design of any interactive software that would not be used by trained technical computer specialists. The current understanding of usability is different from the early days in the 1980s. Usability used to be a dominant concept but this changed with research increasingly focused on usage contexts. Usage quality no longer appeared to be a simple issue of how inherently usable an interactive system was, but how well it fitted its context of use.
The User Experience Professional Association then known as the Usability Professional Association established the World Usability Day in November 2005. The association was founded in 1991, with a membership of 50, and has since grown to serve a community of nearly 2,400 professionals around the world by promoting user experience (UX) concepts and techniques through annual international conferences, the "Journal of Usability Studies" (JUS), the "User Experience Magazine," and 59 local chapters in 30 countries. This organization only manages all of the activities and celebrations for the day and also chooses a specific theme for the event each year.
According to the organization itself, the World Usability Day was started in November 2005 so that we could change the world. Each of us can make a difference, whether we are developers or consumers, our actions shape our world. A humanistic approach to technology development can help to steer us in a positive direction. User centered design and development puts people first. When products and services are developed to enhance our lives, help us do our work more efficiently, and add enjoyment, everyone can benefit.
World Usability Day Significance:
Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, vehicle, or anything a human interacts with. Usability considers user satisfaction and utility as quality components, and aims to improve user experience through iterative design.
Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. Usability is defined by 5 quality components which are learnability which is how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design? Next is efficiency that once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks? Then memorability is when users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency? The comes errors so that how many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors? Last one is satisfaction means how pleasant is it to use the design?
World Usability Day honors product usability by educating people and measuring the influence that technology has on our lives. Product users are taught how best to use technological devices in the best way on this day for their development and ease. The usability of a product's interface also enables transparency. This helps users to concentrate on their activity, make fewer errors, and quicker judgments. This day also teaches us about the importance of technology as the constant progress of technology leads to advancements in all fields such as medical, communication, transport, defense, etc.
The goal of the World Usability Initiative (WUI) is to connect the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the User Experience (UX) community and everyone who believes that great design is inclusive and usable by all so that the standards can be raised so that technology works to harness human potential to the fullest and makes our world more easy to live. The organization wants this day to be aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by establishing World Usability Day as an internationally observed day, listed on the United Nations calendar.
World Usability Day Theme:
The World Usability Day adopts a different theme each year. Organizations, groups, or individuals are encouraged to hold events to mark the day, optionally according to that year's theme. The theme for this year's World Usability Day 2022 is "Our Health".
This theme look to explore systems that provide healthcare in all its many forms such as virtual/telehealth, electronic health records, healthcare products and all digital health related solutions.
This theme will help us explore timely and important issues such as continuity of care, access to treatment, telemedicine, systems for mental health, exercise, nutrition and many more. In addition, Our Health includes health problems related to environmental issues such as air and water pollution impact on health.
Most Searched FAQs on World Usability Day:
1. When is World Usability Day celebrated?
World Usability Day is annually celebrated on every second Thursday of November.
2. What are the five goals of usability?
An understanding of the five characteristics of usability – effective, efficient, engaging, error tolerant, easy to learn – helps guide the user-centered design tasks to the goal of usable products.
3. What is the theme of World Usability Day 2022?
The theme of World Usability Day 2022 is "Our Health".