Tomorrow is World Usability Day

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) and the Digital Technology Center are sponsoring a free program of events on Thursday, November 12, for World Usability Day. The purpose of the program is to promote awareness of the benefits of usability engineering and user-centered design.

World Usability Day was started in 2005 by the Usability Professionals Association and involves 36 hours of usability-related activities around the world in 30 countries.

See the schedule of events on campus. Of particular interest to communicators may be:

• 10:00-10:45 a.m. - "Designing for the Mobile Web"
• 11:00-11:45 a.m. - "Usability and Enterprise Applications: The Case of UM Survey"

Monday link roundup, 9.28.09

Every Monday we'll post a roundup of interesting communications news and articles from the past week. What have you been reading? Add a comment or suggest a link for next week.

Art

• Horrifically bad software demo becomes performance art Live software demos often go awry, but what happens when the mayhem is intentional?
• The Difference Between Art and Design The subject of what separates art and design is convoluted and has been debated for a long time.
• This Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear fan video has been posted for a couple months. One of the hundreds of comments is "I'm gonna throw up this is too good."

Communication Skills

• 
  Master the Art of Listening and Watch All Your Relationships Thrive by Gail Brenner, Ph.D.

People

• President Honors Nation's Top Scientists and Innovators National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation are the highest honors bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists, engineers, and inventors.
• Twenty-four innovators in art, science, writing, and more are 2009 Winners Of MacArthur 'Genius Grants'.

University of Minnesota

• U of M College of Design Mentor Program Mentoring pairs create action plans which help students with career exploration, experiential
  learning, networking, and skill building. Time commitment is two hours per month.
  
• U of M showcases its new-media research resources MinnPost article on the University's Institute for New Media Studies

Web Lists

• Five Tips to Strengthen the Design of Your Nonprofit's Website by Jessica Teal, Design Manager for the Obama presidential campaign
• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines was #1 on popacular.com (a list of the most popular bookmarks from delicious.com)
• 13 Web-Safe Fonts at the Core of Web Typography List of fonts installed on over 90% of computers
• 1000+ Drupal web sites with case studies