Established in 2005 by the Usability Professionals Association, now known as User Experience Professionals Association, World Usability Day (WUD) or Make Things Easier 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 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.
World Usability Day is annually celebrated on the second Thursday in November. It was created to promote the values of usability and user’s responsibility to ask for things that work better.
World Usability Day was established by the User Experience Professionals’ Association, that is active in the USA since 1991.
Technology should enhance one’s life, not add to one’s stress or cause danger through poor design or poor quality. It is their duty to ensure that this technology is effective, efficient, satisfying and reliable, and that it is usable by all people. This is particularly important for people with disabilities, because technology can enhance their lives, letting them fully participate in work, social and civic experiences.
Technology should be developed knowing that human beings have certain limitations. Human error will occur if technology is not both easy-to-use and easy-to-understand. A person needs to reduce human error that results from bad design. He should believe in a united, coordinated effort that is needed to develop reliable, easy-to- use technology to serve people in all aspects of their lives, including education, health, government, privacy, communications, work and entertainment.
One must put people at the center of design, beginning with their needs and wants, and resulting in technology that benefits all of us. Therefore, all the undersigned should agree to work together to design technology that helps human beings truly realize their potential, so that they can create a better world for themselves and future generations.
World Usability Day is a single day of events occurring around the world designed to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use.
Artificial intelligence is a trending topic. A buzzword that is equated with the automation of intelligent behavior in common parlance. Algorithm-controlled machines are often in direct competition with humans. In 2020, the theme is ‘Human-Centered AI’ which seeks to explore design systems that are both highly automated and allow a great degree of user control and will result in to expand human capabilities 1000-fold. If the Human-centered AI can design AI which is “reliable, trusted, and safe”, it can dramatically enhance human performance in the coming decade.
Over the last two decades computers have advanced human’s abilities to perform the work, ensured the safety, and even lightened the workload. Interest in AI’s capabilities to expand human performance even further continues to increase. However, there is an accompanying fear that humans will lose control of the technology they create.
