A collaboration of MTU students across a variety of disciplines met to celebrate last Thursday, November 12. They met in the hallways of Fischer, they presented and discussed in the Memorial Union Ballrooms, and they posted their work on the J.R. Van Holt Library walls. They want us to know about their work in the field of usability.
The event those students celebrated last Thursday was World Usability Day; the theme was “Designing for a sustainable world.” Events included a paper prototype exhibition that demonstrated its’ effectiveness in Fischer, presentations by usability and sustainability experts, and a showcase of usability posters submitted by Michigan Tech students for consideration in the poster design contest.
“Today’s society wants products that have more than one use and that are sustainable,” says Jeremiah Baumann, a student on the committee for organizing World Usability Day at Michigan Tech. “This is where usability comes into play for someone like myself in the Technical Communications field. As a Creative Designer, if my designs aren’t usable, then they are not successful and don’t see the light of day.”
World Usability Day is an international event sponsored by the Usability Professionals’ Association. A group dedicated to using their expertise in usability testing to “humanize technology.” Their website states “your cell phone should be as easy to use as a door knob.” Some of the international highlights of the event included a DesignIT! Conference in Japan, a celebration for the opening of a new testing facility (the iQ Studio) in Dublin, and students performing usability testing for companies in Finland.
Usability itself is a growing field of interest for not only designers and creators but for any students of higher education looking to create products of the highest quality. Usability refers to the quality of a product as well as to the process of testing how real users interact with the product.
The impact of World Usability Day was clear at the Michigan Tech Campus. Jeremiah states “The presentations this year, including the poster sessions, show how usability and sustainability are directly related, allowing for students to reflect about how they can achieve a better world. Michigan Tech students from all disciplines had the chance to learn about sustainability from local experts.”
Those experts included Rick Donovan, the Operations Manager, Senior Engineer and Research Scientist at Sustainable Futures Institute who talked about high performance computing, artificial intelligence computing, computational materials science, and systems modeling for sustainability. Rick Loduha, an Associate Professor of Art and Design (Interdisciplinary Design) at Finlandia University in Hancock talked about design and creative problem solving. And, Christopher Plummer, Associate Professor of Theater in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Michigan Tech talked about sustainability in sound design and soundscapes.
Joshua Kaufman, a writer for the Digital Web Magazine, writes “usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world.” And things were real for Michigan Tech Students last Thursday.
See the World Usability Day Upper Peninsula (WUD U.P.) website at hdmz.hu.mtu.edu for more details about World Usability Day 2009 and for a countdown till next years’ celebration.

With the unexpected resignation of former Editor in Chief Ric Goodell earlier this week, the Michigan Tech Lode has had a shake up with its staff, and I have been named as the new Editor in Chief. With this transition, I will be moving away from both my copy editor and Online Editor positions.

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