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SILS Students Win World Usability Day
Interactionary Design Competition
SILS Interactionary Design Team members ponder the design challenge. From left to right, Anuj Sharma, Sam Kome, Sayan Chakraborty and Ric Simmons. Photo by Cindy McCracken.
Nov. 16, 2005 - Students from the School of Information and Library Science were awarded for their on-the-spot creativity, as they designed a DVD remote control unit that was usable for arthritic and farsighted users.
Anuj Sharma, Sam Kome, Sayan Chakraborty and Ric Simmons represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as they competed against a team from the North Carolina State University during the World Usability Day Interactionary Design Competition. The teams were not given the task beforehand and had only 20 minutes to create their prototype. Five judges, including SILS Professor Dr. Gary Marchionini, evaluated the projects based on teamwork, process, final design and user perspective.
“The Interactionary was great fun and I think we all learned a lot from the judges. The competition is more about process than product - in 20 minutes no one can complete a radical new design,” Sam Kome said. “The team worked well together, used user-centered design principles and had lots of practice.”
World Usability Day is held annually in more than 70 cities in 30 countries to promote easy-to-use technology. Its goal is to emphasize the value of usability engineering, user-centered design and individual user’s responsibility to ask for things to work better. This year, activities that highlighted the importance of these goals focusing on e-government, e-commerce and other commercial applications, took place around the world on Nov. 3.
“Most people don't realize that there are schools and companies dedicated to making things easier to use,” said Abe Crystal, SILS doctoral student and Usability Day attendee. “World Usability Day will help usability specialists and researchers gain the prominence they need to really make a difference.”
Locally, activities were hosted by the Triangle User Experience Group and were held at MCNC, a non-profit organization that is committed to advancing education, innovation and economic development throughout North Carolina by delivering next-generation information technology services.