Feature: A World Usability Day Diary

I've been out celebrating World Usability Day (WUD). It's a first for me to be editor of something that's having its own day. I don't know quite how to feel about it but I can settle for "proud aunt" until I find a role with more gravitas. Anyway, it's a day that I'm in demand. I get home at nearly midnight UK time - after several exciting encounters that I intend to relate to you - only to find that LBC (a London radio station) has mailed me at lunchtime to see if they could interview me on the early evening show. Bad luck, LBC, you should have asked me sooner. November 3rd was a busy day.

But I am jumping ahead of myself, for to give a personal view of the first annual World Usability Day – running for 36 hours from Australasia to the US West Coast and involving 112 events in 34 countries – I have to start at just before midnight UK time on November 2nd, when it all began for me. As the day turned to WUD, I pressed the "send" button on the system that handles the UsabilityNews mailshot (http://www.usabilitynews.com/subscribe.asp?c=8) if you've never signed up) and, with the thought that my "Welcome to the World's first Usability Day" bulletin would be in the in-box of thousands of usability professionals for their morning, I went to bed.

Nine hours later, I am rushing out the door into a windy London to take part in the UK UPA's usability roundtable. When we've all arrived, there are 16 of us (including senior consultants, an academic, a few in-house experts, and a smattering of journalists), which is a few too many for a good discussion. And the questions we are answering are huge:
1. The state of play;
2. Research and design for specific audiences;
3. How to embed user-centred design;
4. The big issues facing usability over the next 10 years.

But even if we don't answer all of them, we cover a fair bit of ground. We talk about the UK's position in a world context – leading, with Australia, on accessibility; holding an impressive but unrecognised track record in usability – and how the profession now expects user-centred design processes to begin even before product development: a big step forward from the bolt-on usability testing of discussions a few years ago.

Julie Howell of the RNIB gives a wonderful case study of the real-time bus-timetabling options presented to locals with sight problems in Stockton. Using DAISY (the Digital Accessible Information SYstem) and mobile phones, timetables can be searched and presented as aural segments. The interesting innovation, though, lies in thinking to offer people a choice of style of DAISY machine and mobile – big and clunky if, for instance, arthritis is also a problem; small and chic for teenagers. The key recognition is that one size does not fit all blind and partially sighted people. We agree that there is a tension to acknowledge between inclusion and differentiation.

Offering choice to the user comes up again in what Jon Rimmer of University College, London calls 'anti-usability'. Describing Sony's tactic of producing many versions of a product and seeing which one sells best, he says it is an instance when user testing has been superseded by appealing straight to market forces. Gerred Blyth of Amberlight adds that this seems to be usual practice in Korea, where no one talks of user-centred design but yet his team and the designers with whom they have worked hold this value in common. Bringing it into the context of the Web, Marty Carroll of Foviance draws attention to the SplitA/B method of testing. Site visitors in the morning see version A; in the afternoon, the site shows version B. Analysis of differences in people's behaviour reveals which constituents work better.

All in all, it is a pleasant morning of seeing friends and marking how far the industry has come. Yet, somehow the big questions - about future challenges, about what needs to be learnt – have been passed over. I wonder what we'll see from "Revolution" reporter Emma Rigby who has sat patiently, pen poised, waiting for a lively angle.

I dash to my next appointment slightly regretful – so many people I'd want to spend two hours debating with, yet it had been without space for cut and thrust. It occurs to me that a smaller group, sat in a piano bar drinking cocktails, perhaps later in the day so that it can run on into the awards, might be the way forward if this is to happen again.

But there's not much time to dwell on improvements as the Technology and Social Action (TSA) workshop is just a hop away at the British Computer Society HQ. The workshop, put on by the 'Designing for the 21st Century' TSA cluster, is to look at requirements for designing for civil society. It brings together academics and members of the voluntary and community sectors and has been scheduled deliberately to coincide with WUD. I get there, windswept, just in time for lunch.

From pundit to researcher, I quickly switch over function and find out what I've missed - all the presentations, it seems. Everyone tells me they were very good.

What I have arrived for is more discussions. Steve Walker of Leeds Met University has shown some consultation findings: that significant issues in this community are FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software); accessibility; and addressing cultural diversity through design. He has contrasted this with the research issues identified, which are all organisational. What he has not found is any interest in actual technologies. In a group of about 12, we spend an hour investigating why that might be and what emerging technologies will mean for social action groups.

The conclusion is that it is the issues around the technology – the degree of flexibility and control that comes with the system, the social protocols around it, the legislative environment and the room for appropriation and integration – are what is important. Peer-to-peer is key, but that is not a technology; it's a use. Systems should be adaptable. And new roles are needed if we are to get the best out of technological change: mediators between these technologies and the people involved in using them; mediators with vision, technical competence and good people skills; architects of new sociotechnical relations.

I realise that the message is the same here: people thrive on choice about how to work with technology and make it appropriate to their lives. The intrinsic difference between how this message is presented in the morning and the afternoon can be summed up by mentioning the suspicion with which the rather passive term 'user' is greeted by the voluntary and community sector; a term that rolled off the tongue for the more commercial group at the roundtable.

Towards the end of the workshop I get introduced to the keynote speaker I'd missed: the internet pioneer and broadcaster-author on all things digital, Bill Thompson. And I discover that there are more strands weaving my day together than I have predicted. For Bill is to compère the evening's UPA awards ceremony. So, I effect my next change of role, from researcher to reporter, in a cab to the Prudential HQ in Cannon Street chatting to Bill. But first I go off to a quiet corner to make a video short about WUD for workshop participant David Wilcox's Designing for Civil Society blog.

We are early at the next venue, where a relieved management team is putting finishing touches to arrangements for the evening ahead. It's all going very well. And Bill is an inspired choice as compère for the new awards ceremony. His belief in the importance of good usable design, coupled with his irreverent delivery, is ideal for the sometimes overly-solemn matter of usability. He introduces an element of darn good fun. And good organisation does the rest: champagne flows, the classiness of the Prudential welcome overwhelms us, all sorts of people turn out specially and there are even some nice frocks.

Six awards are presented (see story: First UK UPA Awards commend Firefox, Flickr, Google, Apple, John Lewis and BA . Bill calls for extreme tension and intense jubilation from the audience and he gets it. As a perfect glitch, when he is part way through the ceremony, his list of events differs from the next slide on the screen and he starts to introduce an award that we are not expecting.

Catching the error and altering his introduction accordingly, he pauses and comments: 'What's going on on the screen is determining my behaviour... How many principles does that violate?' As I said: inspired. The crowd roars.

All the awards are given and taken. The drinking and chatting continues. I leave when I realise I've talked to everyone I know and even some people that I don't know, that I've had a lot of champagne and that I'm tired. It's been a good celebration on a number of levels.

The wind has calmed. I reflect on the day as I cross London home. I keep calling to mind the importance of peer to peer connections. Technology never will be the point. Roundtable, workshop or award ceremony - it's the pleasure and the learning that comes from joining people up. As for the awards ceremony - well, I wouldn't change a thing for next year. Bring it on...

Appendix
Attendees at the UK UPA round table:
Louise Croft-Baker, O2
Tom Stewart, System Concepts
Tom Adams, Cabinet Office
Ann Light, Usability News
Jon Rimmer, UCL
Gerred Blyth, Amberlight
Be Kaler Blake, Recruit Media
Julie Howell, RNIB
Jarnail Chudge, Microsoft
Nico Macdonald, Design Agenda
Marty Carroll, Foviance
Jonathan Hassell, BBC
Louise Ferguson, Digital Habitats
Emma Rigby, Revolution Magazine
Giles Colborne, cxpartners
Ashley Friedlein, E-consultancy

Associated Link: Full award nomination list

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