Michael Gaigg: Über UI/UX Design

World Usability Day 2009

Today is World Usability Day (check out events in your area)!

What is World Usability Day?

"World Usability Day was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association to ensure that services and products important to human life are easier to access and simpler to use. Each year, on the second Thursday of November, over 200 events are organized in over 43 countries around the world to raise awareness for the general public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice."

"It's about making our world work better. It's about "Making Life Easy" and user friendly. Technology today is too hard to use."

A word about Usability

Usability is well-defined but often simply summarized in three key questions:

• Who are your users?
• What are their goals?
• How can you help them achieve those goals?

Another Key Question to Ask

Today and here I want add another key question that businesses need to ask themselves:

• What is the business reason for supporting this goal (=task)?

Without asking this question it's really hard to generate revenue and being successful in both, terms of business and metrics to evaluate success. As a side-note: It also gets more difficult to sell the benefits of Usability and it's methodologies to stakeholders.

Similar Posts:

• What is Usability?
• Free book online: The Principles of Successful Freelancing
• Esri listens to their Users and changes Pronunciation of its Name

About Michael Gaigg

Michael Gaigg is a User Interface Expert at ESRI. His expertise includes User-centered Design (UCD), Usability, Accessibility and Section 508, Web Development and Web Design.