"Usability as a global, mainstream business tool"

This event took place Monday, May 8th from 4:00-7:30 pm at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London. It featured the following speakers:

		Apala Lahiri Chavan, HFI's VP Asia spoke on Contextual innovation and offshore usability outsourcing. She discussed how the largest multinationals are applying usability to develop new product ideas. She gave inciteful glimpses into the opportunities at the bottom of the economic pyramid, from China to India to Brazil. Apala Lahiri Chavan is a noted authority on innovative design methods.
		Elisa del Galdo, Chief Technical Officer, Human Factors Europe, spoke on Software internationalisation and localisation. She explained how to develop successful global software applications by overcoming differences in cultural viewpoints, conventions, business rules, and psychology. Elisa del Galdo co-authored International User Interfaces with Jakob Nielsen.
		Dr. Eric Schaffer, CEO of HFI, spoke on How to institutionalise usability and demonstrate its ROI. He showed how to calculate the ROI of usability work through case study examples from e-commerce, information sites, intranets, and applications. He talked about worldwide organizations that are adopting usability practices and the process needed to establish training, methods, tools, standards, and staffing. Dr. Eric Schaffer has 30 years of software usability experience and wrote Institutionalization of Usability: A Step-by-Step Guide.