Dr. Torkil Clemmensen

To the usability practitioners of India


Dear Dinesh Katre,

Ever since the launch of the Cultural Usability project in 2004, between India, China and Denmark (www.culturalusability.com), I have increasingly become aware of the Usability community in India, and accordingly my expectations in terms of research and deployment of products has been increasing. Usability must be defined locally and empirically in order to be a true and helpful goal for developing technology.

I have observed with interest your approach to usability within the diverse contexts existing in India today. Diversity challenges all researchers to use empirical observations as your key motivation in your interaction design for users of technology in complex cultural, social and organisational work and life contexts, http://www.ifip-hci.org/WorkingGroups.html#Anchor-WG-49575. Designing for usability for a diversity of cross cultural and local user groups can facilitate the development of communities around the world.

As human centred design gets legitimised as part of software engineering methodologies, the direction of technology innovation will be formed by studying and collaborating with target users. Consequently issues such as usability evaluation, in the broad sense and in localised versions, will involve users in a myriad of ways previously missed.

Usability practitioners in India and elsewhere in the world share an emerging awareness of cultural perspectives of human computer interaction, as for instance evident by independent tracks on usability and internationalization at the HCI International 2007 in Beijing this year, http://www.springer.com/east/home/computer/user+interfaces?SGWID=5-154-22-173746291-0.

In Scandinavia, the Human Computer Interaction research tradition has always had a strong connection to empirical reality of work, and the aim to produce practical assets for software design has been one important issue in the research.

I continue to be hopeful of the initiatives being made in the usability area in India. I am confident that we will see an increasing number of research contributions to HCI tracks in the coming future. Particularly the need for new or better processes, methods and tools for systems development in practice is the focus of the next Interact conference in Sweden in 2009, http://www.interact2009.com/.

Further information on usability and human computer interaction with a focus on business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts can be found at http://sigs.aisnet.org/SIGHCI/

Sincerely...

Torkil Clemmensen

Torkil Clemmensen,
Department of Informatics,
Copenhagen Business School,
Denmark,
tc.inf@cbs.dk
http://www.cbs.dk/staff/clemmensen

Message from Dr. Ben Shneiderman during WUD 2006

World Usability Day 2007, Pune
Programme Schedule
13th - 14th Nov 2007

Interested participants can send
confirmations on puneusability@yahoo.co.in (Free Registration!)

DAY 1: November 13, 2007

Duration: 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm
Venue: Chandrasekhar Auditorium, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune University Campus, Pune
Click for roadmap to Chandrasekhar Auditorium, IUCAA

2:00 - 2:30 Registration

Keynote Lecture on Cultural Usability
Dr. Torkil Clemmensen, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Session 1 Usability and Healthcare (WUD Theme Presentations)

Usability Concerns in Telemedicine
Devashish Pandya, Independent Consultant, Pune

Intensive Care Unit (ICU): A Case for Universal Usability
Prof. Ganesh Bhutkar, Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT), Pune

Visual and Cognitive Fatigue Caused by User Interface Design
Dr. Dinesh Katre, Group Coordinator (Head), HCID and National Multimedia Resource Centre, C-DAC, Pune

Usability and Healthcare
Manisha Belwalkar, Practice Head, Usability Research, Pure IT, Pune

UE Case Study in Healthcare
Pankaj Arora, Sr. Usability Engineer, Persistent Systems Ltd. Pune

Session 2 Institutionalizing Usability (Experience Sharing)

First 24 Hours (F24H)
Sandeep Datar, Manager, User Centric Design, Symantec Software Corporation, Pune

The Cohezia Experience
Siddharth Deshmukh, Chief Operating Officer, Cohezia

19AM.COM Experience
Samyak Pungaliya, Director, 19AM.COM

PureIT Experience
Harshit Desai, CMO, Pure Information Technologies, Pune

Satyam Experience
Atul Manohar, Head, User Experience Management, Satyam Computer Services Ltd, Pune

Open House (Question-Answer Session)

DAY 2: November 14,2007
Duration: 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Bhageerath Building, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune

Keynote Lecture on Thinking by Design
Nancy Dickenson, User Experience, Senior Director, eBay, USA

Institutionalization of Usability at Persistent Systems
Jhumkee Iyengar, Consultant and Sammeer Chabukswar, Group Head, Usability Engineering, Persistent Systems Ltd.

Cognitive Response of Villagers to Interactive Systems as Lessons for UX Design
Dr. Dinesh Katre, Group Coordinator (Head), HCID and National Multimedia Resource Centre, C-DAC, Pune