Things to add to World Usability Day

November 13th, 2008

I hadn’t realised, it was like missing my wife’s birthday - all I can do is pop into a garage and find flowers and chocs - but today Im celebrating world usability day !!!  What a great idea, lets delve into the website and explore the burning issues of how we grapple with an inaccessible web, how we celebrate the advent of voice and touch as a real interface - what lessons do we learn from 20 years of inclusive design as we move into a new web 3 era

Hang on  - let me looka that website again

Ohhhhh its about usability of tranportation - well thats still cool…. low level buses, RFID tags on public transport, the advent of GPS with voice as a wayfinder ……….

Hang on lets look at that website again

Through the Global Transport challenge ill be able to …..

• MEASURE your everyday transportation usage
• MONITOR your  personal carbon travel footprint and compare yourself to othersaround the world
• MINIMIZE your energy usage through alternative transportation choices, carbon offsets, and simple travel changes  thereby  maximizing the impact on our world.

WHAT !!!

Hang on this was supposed to be about usability - its there at the top of the page - ok maybe its my mistake - Ill look it up on the web …. hmmm no cant see it there “Carbon emissions and usability” nope not really related…. in any way…. whatsover

Now Im all for reducing greenhouse gases, I believe in recycling - I even do it

But…. why is world usability day focussing on the environment ?

Maybe someone somewhere decided this was more important - well OK - lets see what else we could usefully lump in on Nov 13th to cofuse people

1 Usability and Obesity - the social networks of healthy school dinners

2 A usable economic downturn - how to design your very own credit crunch

3 Usable Obama ?

Its not as if we get a lot of days to draw attention to usability and accessibility - so you might have thought, you might have even felt strongly, that World Usability Day should make some vague attempt to talk about usability

OK its a precedent - the important thing is to identify a public day and then talk about something completely different on it

1 World Innovation Day -Does Santa Exist ?

2 World Health Day - World of Warcraft - where now ?

3 World Carfree Day - How to stop your computer making every part of your body hurt so that you cant access education, employment or connect to people

Your ideas for other things that World Usability Day might like to cover in 2009, and inappropriate days to draw attention to usability are always appreciated