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Guiomar Pimentel's Essay

The User Experience Community (UEC) focuses on usability. Why should I care about usability? Answer: Because usability contributes to sustainability.

There are two ways of viewing sustainability: the environment and organizational success. The UEC needs to educate the world on why usability, readability and effectiveness for all technology support sustainability both environmentally and organizationally, examples follow.

The environment: Most users still print information because it's hard to find/read online. By addressing ease of use and readability, people will read and reference things more online versus printing (saving paper, time and energy). Think of a Kindle versus a book or printed directions versus using a GPS. Technology can help make a difference and supports sustainability; however, sometimes technology isn't easy to use/learn. UEC can help make technology easier by strategizing with developers and providing tools to create easy to use/consistent user interfaces and standards.

Organizational success: With layoffs and company's going out of business, companies need to work efficiently and effectively to remain operational. By having organizations focus on the overall user experience from accessing information on their Website to their intranet or internal applications, usability will impact an organization's success. UEC's education can show how usability contributes to their bottom line – focusing on their environmental impact and their contribution to sustainability. Companies need to focus on improving their overall processes and how they do business – it's not just usability – it's educating the world on how usability contributes to sustainability.

Technology has added complexity to the world. Companies continue to implement / develop new systems not taking users' experience into consideration. EUC can help organizations understand the impact usability makes – saving time and money. The User Experience Community should focus on usability contributing to sustainability not only for the environment but also an organization's overall success. Remember... usability contributes to sustainability in many ways.

Read Tim's essay  |  Read Dave's essay
Read Amy's essay  |  Read Arpana's essay  |  Read Brian's essay  |  Read Guiomar's essay
Read Leina's essay  |  Read Marisa's essay  |  Read Premjit's essay  |  Read Rhys's essay
Read Scott's essay  |  Read Tara's essay  |  Read Jimmy's essay

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