World Usability Day Announces 2011 Theme - Education: Designing for Social Change

Online, March 11, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Education: Designing for Social Change is the theme for World Usability Day (WUD) 2011. "World Usability Day 2011 will focus outwardly on how usability impacts our organizations, our cultures, and our world," said Elizabeth Rosenzweig, founder of WUD.

This year's events and forums will focus on how Design Education will help develop products and services that will impact social change. Programs will examine all products and services used for teaching how usable design impacts the world, whether it's close at hand (organizations), surrounding us (particular cultures/communities) or from a global view. . . how does something designed in China, Scotland, India or the United States, for example, have impact on other nations around the world?WUD will explore and celebrate: Design Education - designing with an intentional outcome of sparking change in how people behave, communicate, and do things in the world; and examining the concept of cultures and how culture impacts usability.

About World Usability Day
WUD was founded in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals Association(UPA) 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, nearly 250 events are organized in more than 40 countries around the world to raise awareness from the general public, and to train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.

WUD is about making our world work better. It's about "Making Life Easy" and user friendly. While it is getting easier, much of today's technology is still too hard to use easily. A cell phone should be as easy to use as a light switch. In order to humanize a world that uses technology as an infrastructure for education, communication, healthcare, transportation, government, entertainment, work and other areas, we must develop supporting technologies in a way that serves people first.

About the Usability Professionals Association
The UPA was established in 1991 and continues to be the organization of choice for usability professionals worldwide. The UPA holds a yearly international conference (June 21 -24, 2011, Atlanta, GA, USA: Designing for Social Change), publishes new findings through both the Journal of Usability Studies (JUS) and through User Experience (UX)Magazine, and has 50 chapters around the world.