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The photos are here! The photos are here!

We're meeting tomorrow night at the Cheesecake Factory @ Southpoint (Get Directions ») from 6:00 - 7:30. We're trying a new night this month--Wednesday instead of our typical Tuesday night. Hope to see you there!

It’s been a week (okay, a week and a few days) since we celebrated World Usability Day here in the Triangle.
We’re putting the finishing touches on the photo gallery and hope to have it published by the end of this week. (Though, it might not be until next week.) Thanks, again, to everyone who participated: our sponsors, our judges, the teams, and our great audience! Keep checking back here for more information about user experience in the triangle and next year’s World Usability Day!

Some people have reported problems getting their usability ticket to post to the tag "uticket" in flickr. If you don't see your ticket under the tag, email your picture and a description of the violation or commendation to rick@triux.org.

It's finally here. Some last minute notes about tonight's events:

* The event is tonight from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. @ MCNC Building #1; Get Directions »
* It is free and open to the public, so come one, come all!
* Without our sponsors help, we wouldn't be here. Thank you Blue Cross Blue Shield, Motricity, and hesketh.com!
* Here's the agenda for the festivities.
* Our great line-up of panelists/judges!
* And, last but certainly not least, our interactionary teams.

This article from the Sydney Morning Herald about World Usability Day starts off absolutely hilarious:

> The managers of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport faced a difficult problem a few years ago. They were having to spend a fortune cleaning the men's toilets because the aim of Dutch men was so poor.

> "They hired some guys who sat in the urinals for several weeks, just observing," says Ash Donaldson. "They noticed that if there was a cigarette butt or a fly in the urinal men would aim at it. So they etched the shape of a fly into each urinal - and that reduced the cleaning bill by 80 per cent."

I bet the conducting that ethnographic study was a lot of fun! ;)

Read the full article:

* http://tinyurl.com/acglm

Some interesting quotes:

> But some tech engineers and designers assume too much: that since they understand how the gadget works, everyone should. Bias quips: "A whole lot of companies went out of business because their users were too stupid."

...and...

>"The feature-list wars were not good for software," consultant Quesenbery says. "People threw a function in because it gave them a check-box on a list, not because it met the needs of the marketplace."

> Microsoft is redesigning the user interface for the next version of Office, due next fall. Microsoft will display only the tools you'll likely use most frequently. The goal: to cut the number of clicks to complete a task. In Office 2003, it took 26 clicks to insert a text box into a document; with the new version, four.

Read the entire article:

* http://tinyurl.com/99af6

From the BBC:

> With thousands of products and services to choose from, ease of use is still a bonus factor rather than a norm and those that possess this elusive quality often go on to dominate markets.

> Google, Amazon and eBay are successful brands not just because of their financial models but the ease with which their users are able to achieve their goals on these sites, be they searching, buying or selling.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4393468.stm

Motricity is holding a corporate usability ticketing event. We've asked program managers and developers at Motricity to ticket products with great or poor usability. On Thursday, November 3, we'll collect the tickets and hold a random drawing to award an Ipod Nano to one lucky person.

Corporate ticketing events, like this one, are designed to encourage people to think about how usability issues affects their day-to-day lives, giving them a better understanding of how the products they build affect your customers' day-to-day lives. There's still time to hold your own corporate ticketing event.

A couple of notable updates to the usability ticketing contest:

* Deadline for entries has been extended to Thursday at noon.
* Instead of looking for the most interesting usability tickets, we're now going to hold a random drawing.

For full details, visit:

* http://www.triux.org/usability-ticket/