World Usability Day: A Day Dedicated To Making Life Easier Through Usability

On November 11 2010, students of SZABIST University, Karachi celebrated “World Usability Day”. The main objective of this event was to discuss modern trends and practices of Software Usability Engineering; highlighting the issues faced by customers as well as developers and suggesting remedies to address these issues and improve usability in software.

What is World Usability Day?

It is about making our world work better, and it is about “Making Life Easy” and user friendly

World Usability Day (WUD) is an annual international celebration. It 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. The reason for celebrating this day is to promote awareness of the benefits of usability engineering and user-centered designs. Annual events are organized in countries around the world to raise awareness amongst the public, and train professionals in the tools and issues central to good usability research, development and practice.

World Usability Day in Pakistan

The World Usability Day, WUD, was celebrated in Pakistan for the first time in history. Continuing the efforts to equip students with the latest knowledge and trends, SZABIST University, Karachi took the lead and realizing the importance of Usability in our life, celebrated World Usability Day

Eram Abbasi, a Ph.D. student at SZABIST initiated the idea of celebrating this day by hosting a panel discussion with local industry experts. Guests included a panel of experts from the industry who celebrated this day with the students of SZABIST and shared their own experiences with the students. Members of the IEEE student branch at SZABIST took the responsibility to organize this event.

Among the invited guests for the panel discussion were:

Muhammad Fahad, Director Engineering, Folio3. His talk focused on Software Usability Engineering – Trends and issues from the implementers’ perspective

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Muhammad Usman bin Rizwan, IT Consultant. He is involved in business analysis, technical consultancy, project management, and system implementation. He focused his discussion on Software Usability Engineering – Trends and issues from the business (customer’s) perspective.

Mazhar Ali, Software Engineer, Techlogix Pvt. Ltd. His discussion focused on Software Usability Engineering – Trends and issues from the developers’ perspective

Eram Abbasi was the moderator for the event. She initiated the discussion by highlighting the importance of WUD and giving the aims and objectives of the discussion. During the course of action the panelists shared their experiences and provided insight into software usability trends.

M Fahad started his discussion by emphasizing that to make any software more usable is very different from making it more user-friendly. He elaborated his point by giving examples of the usability of web applications. During his talk, he addressed various usability challenges like Scalability, Visual Design, Comprehension and Interactivity of the software. He emphasized that it was imperative to address these usability challenges while developing or implementing an application. “Lack of Usability” is one of the major reasons why users switch from one application to another.

Usman Rizwan started his talk by presenting a maxim “Let’s make life simple”. He continued by presenting the software usability perspective of various companies (as users). He emphasized that software, as a product, should be designed in such a way that it becomes easy for the user to use. He made his discussion interesting for the audience by giving examples of the usability perspectives of various small to large businesses, from a ‘Pakora Wala’ or ‘Sabzi Wala’ to large organizations including multinationals. He accentuated that ‘simple features’ is the key that makes any software popular.

Talking about Enterprise Applications, Mr. Rizwan said that users generally experience problems in understanding the flow of the software due to the complexity of such applications. Due to this reason, implementers face resistance from the users.  He suggested that a good solution to this problem would be to spend time with the users before implementing the application. Carefully observe what the users do, and then relate their routine tasks with the process flow of the application. This will help users in gaining a better understanding of the application.

Mazhar shared his experience as a software engineer. He said that when developing an application, their organization adopts a strategy of sharing things closely with the customers. He believes that usability of any software can improve through user feedback. This is why they involve users during the development activities. He added that one of the major reasons for users’ not feeling comfortable in using an application is when the user does not have the proper training to appreciate that application. To address this issue, they closely interact with the user and observe their working process. Then based on the input, they design a prototype that is further refined based on users’ feedback.

Giving examples of various applications that he has worked on, Mr. Mazhar discussed the problems they faced in terms of usability and how they improved usability in the application. He emphasized that standardized process for application development and meticulous user input are vital to improving usability in an application.

The panel discussion was interactive with an enthusiastic participation from the participants. Through the discussion, participants gained an insight into software usability engineering and were able to explore a wide variety of issues and discuss relevant solutions. The event was an invaluable learning experience, hence the objectives of the event were effectively met.

“Why doesn’t this work better? Why can’t they make this easier?” World Usability Day is for all the people who have ever asked questions like these.