The World Usability Day Committee is ecstatic: “World Usability Day 2010 is behind us!  We are happy to report another successful global event. More than 44 countries participated, hosting more than 154 events. Thank you to the over 2,000 WUD supporters who followed us on Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn. With your help we created a real buzz about this year’s event”.

However, in Belgium, everything remained extremely calm. Apart from the ‘Belgian Usability Awards’, which initially weren’t even conceived as a World Usability Day event, no event was organized. Neither radio nor television paid any attention to the World Usability Day. And the few coverage of the usability awards was quickly (and literally) flushed away by the rains and the consequent floods.

There’s a harsh contrast with previous years, when sometimes 4 or 5 events fought for attention. Admittedly, the timing could not have been worse: Armistice day, right in the middle of the Autumn holidays. Hardly a good time to get people engaged in anything but spending a couple of days with the family. But still…

Is usability not an interesting subject any more? Has every technology suddenly become easy to use and learn? Have we stopped cursing idiosyncratic software features and finger-twitching remote controls? I don’t think so. More than 44 countries participated in the World Usability Day, hosting more than 154 events. In Belgium, the silence was deafening.

It was ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ all over again.

Kris Vanstappen
Managing partner Human Interface Group