World Usability Day (WUD) or Make Things Easier Day is celebrated on on the second Thursday of November and this year it will fall on November 9. The day aims to promote the values of usability, usability engineering, user-centred design, universal usability, and every user’s responsibility to ask for things that work better.
List of Important Days in November 2023: National and International
World Usability Day 2023: History and Theme
| Year | Date | Theme |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 14 November 2006 | Accessibility and “Making life easy” |
| 2007 | 8 November 2007 | Healthcare |
| 2008 | – | Transportation |
| 2009 | – | Designing for a Sustainable World |
| 2010 | – | Designs, products and services that improve and facilitate communication |
| 2011 | – | Education: Designing for Social Change |
| 2012 | – | Usability of Financial Systems |
| 2013 | 14 November 2013 | Healthcare: Collaborating for Better Systems |
| 2014 | 13 November 2014 | Engagement |
| 2015 | 12 November 2015 | Innovation |
| 2016 | 10 November 2016 | Sustainability |
| 2017 | 9 November 2017 | Inclusion |
| 2018 | 8 November 2018 | Design for Good or Evil |
| 2019 | 14 November 2019 | Design for the Future We Want |
| 2020 | 12 November 2020 | Human–Centered AI |
| 2021 | 11 November 2021 | Trust, Ethics and Integrity |
| 2022 | 11 November 2022 | Health |
| 2023 | November 9, 2024 | – |
| 2024 | November 14, 2024 | – |
| 2025 | November 13, 2024 | – |
| 2026 | – | – |
| 2027 | – | – |
World Usability Day 2023: Quotes
1. “The next big thing is the one that makes the last big thing usable.” – Blake Ross
2. “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus
3. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs
4. “Usability testing is the killing field of cherished notions.” – David Orr
5. “Usability is not only about ease of use but also about bringing something meaningful, having an objective in common with the user.” – Marcus Osterberg
6. “Usability rules the Web. Simply stated, if the customer can’t find a product, then he or she will not buy it.” – Jakob Nielsen
7. “Usability is about people and how they understand and use things, not about technology.” – Steve Krug
8. “Good design means never having to say ‘Click Here’.” – Shawn Leslie
9. “Usability is critical for any application, but for mass-market software, usability spells success or failure more clearly than any other feature.” – Jerrold Grochow
10. “The usability tests we have conducted during the last year have shown an increasing reluctance among users to accept innovations in Web design. The prevailing attitude is to request designs that are similar to everything else people see on the Web.”- Jakob Nielsen
11. “Usability really just means making sure that something works well: that a person of average (or even below average) ability and experience can use the thing – whether it’s a website, remote control, or revolving door – for its intended purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.” – Steve Krug
12. “To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.” – Milton Glaser
13. “Behavioral design is all about feeling in control. Includes: usability, understanding, but also the feel.” – Donald A. Norman
14. “Usability does not equate to a specific number of clicks, taps, swipes, pinches, flicks.” – John Morkes
15. “Usability answers the question, “Can the user accomplish their goal?” – Dr. Joyce Lee