Making Life Easy at Northwestern Mutual

Northwestern Mutual's usability team will have three booths availible for employees to learn about usability and the benefits of usability. Many signs promoting usability will be placed at both campuses. Activities include...

Hands-on usability: Visitors to any booth will be asked to set lamp timers. There will be three different timers to show the difference in usability of each design.

Usability Bewitched: Remember the 1960's popular sitcom Bewitched? Each booth will feature a clip from the show as Daren explains the controls of a car to Samantha. (Permission to use the clip was granted by Sony.)

Day-in-the-life: Each booth will also feature a short program that chronicles a day-in-the-life of a typical person. The program will show the interactions that a person encounters from the time they wake up until they go to bed.

iPod Shuffle raffle: Employees can enter to win an iPod Shuffle. To enter the raffle, employees will be asked to fill out brief informational form. We will offer two forms side-by-side-one that is easy to fill out and one that is difficult to fill out. Additionally, the raffle box will have a round hole instead of a slot to show how simple things can become unusable.

Usability lab open house: The usability lab will be open for employees to tour. The usability lab will have a recording of a real usability lab playing on the observation bay monitors. The mobile usability lab will also be availible for employees to check out.