World Usability Day “occurs annually to promote the values of usability, usability engineering, user-centered design, universal usability, and every user’s responsibility to ask for things that work better. The day adopts a different theme each year”. 2015 is the Ten Year Anniversary for World Usability Day, themed “The Year of Innovation”.

Innovation can take many forms, and while it means different things to different people, it generally encompasses new inventions and improvements in products and services that address problems or enhance situations in novel ways.

In the context of User Experience (UX), innovation ensures that people can achieve their goals seamlessly and efficiently, with technology, products, and services that significantly enhance their overall experience.

I’m fortunate to have been involved at an early stage of my product and technology career with UX.

A blast from the past…Reuters 1993-1997

To better address customer needs, Reuters established the “Usability Initiative” in 1993, creating The Usability Group (TUG) in London (satellite operations were formed later in the Americas and Asia).

This group was tasked with achieving significant breakthroughs in the Customer Experience (CX), usability, usability engineering, and user-centered design of all Reuters products, using a bespoke Customer-Centered Design approach that placed the customer at the heart of everything.

This unique experimental strategy was built on an evolutionary, self-perpetuating, and continuously evolving life cycle of increasingly relevant and responsive products. Initially given 6-months to make a difference, it proved so successful that it evolved for more than 4 years.

Ahead of the times (in so many ways).

To realize his vision, Greg Garrison, the group’s Director, needed swift access to a diverse range of skills that needed to evolve over time. He ultimately formed a virtual Agile team—established eight years before the Agile Manifesto—comprising over 100 specialists from various professional services firms.

Well-designed user experiences allow for the uniqueness of individuals’ strengths and beliefs to coexist in a space of similarity and common ground. Tools and technologies that embrace these similarities unlock everyone’s potential, creating conditions that enable people to be their best selves and produce better outcomes.

Conversely, poorly designed systems foster confusion as users struggle to perform simple tasks not designed with them in mind. In the worst cases, such technology can generate inaccurate information and results, reinforcing perceptions of rigged systems and false information. This was one of the problem spaces that TUG needed to rectify.

The caricature was created of the key team at TUG at Reuters, drawn in the closing days of the 4-year experiment. (If you look carefully, you might even spot me looking a little more youthful).

Shout out to Greg Garrison, Calum Benson, Ron Bird, David Brazier, Peter Brown, Ken Chakahwata, Ian Clowes, Lynne Colgan, Patrick Cooper, Mark Daymond, Des Dearlove, Rodney Edwards, David Gold, Miles Goodchild, Alan Gorton, Robin Heath, Sarah Howell, William Hudson, Reza Khan, Vanessa Kirby, Jovan Ljubojevic, Alan MacGechan, Peter McKenna, Caroline O’Flaherty, Ian Pardoe, Glenn Pittaway. Hope you are safe & well.

A few of the 100 specialists who worked with the group during it’s 4-year life. From organizations as diverse as Admiral Management Services, Logica, Inference, Microsoft, PA Consulting, etc.