World Usability Day Off To Quick Start Worldwide

Online, July 21, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Education: Designing for Social Change is the theme for World Usability Day (WUD) 2011, Nov. 10. "World Usability Day 2011 will focus outwardly on how usability impacts our organizations, our cultures, and our world," said Elizabeth Rosenzweig, founder of WUD.

The first registered event for WUD 2011 is in Bogotá, Colombia. The event is described by event organizer Natalia Vivas "A complete seminar to learn and update what you already know about User Experience, Usability, Information Architecture and Interactive Design. We will have the special participation of several important speakers, including:
Whitney Hess - UX consultant: Principles of Design: the philosophy of UX
Javier Velasco - Information architect: Usability and Social Networks
Santiago Bustelo - Latam IxDA Coordinator: Interaction Design

For more information, Vivas can be reached at [email protected] .

Oho Interactive (Oho), Cambridge, MA, is the first U.S. company to register an event (Beyond Usability: Creating Applications that Connect with Users) on the World Usability Day website which launched in mid-June. The Oho WUD event will be held at the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) Center at 1 Memorial Dr. Cambridge MA.

"Business to business applications are truly going in the direction of business to consumer applications as user expectations for quality user interfaces are growing exponentially," said Jason Smith, Chief Creative Officer and Managing Partner at Oho, the event's keynote speaker. "Companies need to meet those needs or risk poor user adoption, lots of support tickets and poor productivity as well as user dissatisfaction. We've seen in our own practice what a difference a thoughtfully designed user interface can make." To read details about the Oho event visit Events by Country.

Although WUD isn't until November, other registered worldwide events are in Austria, Brazil, Germany, Iran, Mexico and Poland.

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.