WUD-UP! World Usability Day in the Upper Peninsula at Michigan Tech

WUD-UP! World Usability Day Comes to Houghton Houghton, MI – Usability: it’s about making our world work better, making life easier and more “user-friendly.” World Usability Day is an annual, International event that has grown globally over the past several years. Events take place in locations across the world: from Germany to Japan, from the Philippines to Iceland. And this year, for the first time, World Usability Day is coming to the Copper Country. World Usability Day – U.P. (WUD-UP) takes place on Michigan Tech’s campus on Thursday, November 13, 2008. The 2008 theme centers on Usability in Transportation. At the Copper Country’s inaugural event, MTU students will have the opportunity to showcase their work in usability at a poster session podcast by Tim Keirnan of designcritique.net. A panel of transportation professionals will discuss usability issues in their fields, with an informal reception following for students and members of the community to meet the panelists. “Our hope is to raise awareness of usability and user-centered design as a relatively new but fast-growing field,” said Karla Kitalong, Associate Professor of Humanities at MTU, and member of the WUD-UP planning committee. “We are focusing a great deal on students, to show them how this field fits in with their professional goals, and how important it is for engineers, programmers, and other technological professionals to design with the users’ needs in mind.” The World Usability Day – U.P. event has something for everyone. The poster session (3 to 4 p.m.) provides students with an important opportunity to talk about their work, as well as to gain feedback from each other and from those users they will someday be designing for. And the panel presentation (4-5:15 p.m.) features professionals who have real-life experience and insights into important usability issues. “Our panelists represent a wide range of transportation professionals,” Kitalong said. “They work in railroad transportation, highway and pavement management, and automobile information technology. We even have two MTU students who worked on a transportation project in Bolivia.” Panelists include Pasi Lautala, founder and director of MTU’s railroad engineering program; Chad Esselink of the Ford Information Technology Division in Dearborn; Tim Colling, Assistant Director of Michigan’s Local Technical Assistance Program; and Elise Cleary and Kari Klaboe, both undergraduate students who worked on a road and storm drainage system in Bolivia as part of Michigan Tech’s International Senior Design (ISD) program. The event will be podcast by Tim Keirnan, a nationally recognized usability expert and blogger at www.designcritique.net. This year’s World Usability Day – U.P. event is sponsored by the MTU Department of Humanities, Michigan Tech Transportation Institute (MTTI), the Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP), and designcritique.net. For information, email kitalong@mtu.edu or call her at 487-3254.