Tags: combine usability and environmental aspects, design, environment, Green IT, sustainable IT, usability, World Usability Day
I think this heading captures the purpose of truly sustainable design and the theme for World Usability Day 2009.
Each year, World Usability Day is an opportunity to highlight achievements in user-centric design. On November 12 usability thought leaders, consumers , industry and researchers gathered at events in over 43 countries to discuss the latest innovations in usability design. Basically, the mission of the event is to “Make Life Easier”.
This year’s theme was “Designing for a Sustainable World”, and reflected the growing demand for “green” design in combination with highly functional products. In the United States, TCO Certified showcased a selection of TCO Certified notebook PCs at the event hosted by Sabre Holdings in Southlake, Texas. The event featured product exhibits, usability testing demos and a keynote presentation by renown design professor and author, Nathan Shedroff. You can view a copy of Nathan’s presentation below -a useful source for why usability and sustainability in design must go together.
Nathan’s message in short: “Don’t design things today that make tomorrow worse”
http://www.worldusabilityday.org/sites/worldusabilityday.org/themes/wud/resources/nathanshedroff.pdf
Tags: design, efficiency, energy, love It, sustainability, World Usability Day
This week was World Usability Day, all over the planet on 12 of November, so also in Stockholm. Lots of good presentations, discussions, work shops and a nice cosy summing up mingle at Clarion Sign Hotel.
One of the presentations was a splendid example of how to learn more about Usability, and then simply love it by doing and acting personally. Under the title ” I love it, how to make the climate question more simple, more fun and more interesting”, Mr Martin Magnusson, lead consultant on energy, efficiency and sustainability, working for Logica, Sweden, made this very obvious. He explained why the processing towards “loving” has to pass through the processes of “external pressure”; “should” and “being interested”. He showed a various kit of devices and services on how to save energy. These devices were carefully created in Design for high Usability, for the consumer, for the company as well as for the community, also on a national level. His summing up was Good Design that clearly showed how to improve Usage, leading to energy saving and higher efficiency.
Those of you who understand Swedish, follow Martin´s presentation on WUD´s website http://www.wud.se/
http://www.wud.se/aktiviteter/32.pdf
Tags: Add new tag, design, easy to use, lighting, switch, touch, usable
Hi all.
Stayed at a hotel last week, it was charming, newly designed in its interior, lovely atmosphere. If it wasn´t for one important problem. The lighting switch. After a transportation by train, by another train, by flight and by another train and at last by a metro. At last, walking to the hotel, at night, tired, taking the tiny elevator up, wanting only to get into bed, I could not find this important lihgting switch. Poking around for some while, decided to take the elevator back down to the reception asking for help to find this switch. They cordially showed me. It was hidden down somewhere, at foot level, as not to disturb the design impression. It was a touch switch, when found, very easy to use. But impossible to find, in a black dark room. Usability is about products easy to use, sure, though they must also be logically and visually placed, right??
Tags: design, sustainability, USA
This week I was speaking at the International Symposium for Sustainable Systems and Technology in Tempe, Arizona http://www.ieee-issst.org/ and was impressed to see the innovative approach to sustainability learning at Arizona State University, who has opened USA’s first School of Sustainability and celebrated their first graduates earlier this month, with President Obama in attendance.
ASU President, Michael Crow described the School’s multidisciplinary approach to sustainability, with a focus on real outcomes. A clearer connection between science, engineeering and social science is a priority as sustainability graduates are encouraged to look closer at human behavior and intergenerational design. http://schoolofsustainability.asu.edu/
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