Usability-n-Life

We all perform usability functions.

How?? When??

Well...  just like "necessity is the mother of invention," I believe "experience is the mother of usability."  We do something enough times we will find the "usability" of it or hate the lack of it.  We all use tools to make our jobs easier.  A car to get some where, a pen instead of a pencil so we don't have to worry about sharpening it, paper plates instead of glass so we can throw them out and don't have to clean them.  I even believe the lack of usability creates waste, and "Confusion and Delay."  The words you hear in my son's favorite show Thomas the Tank Engine.  It is said by Sir Toppin Hat when he finds an engine not being useful.

Ever have to go to your knees to plug-in something?  Well electrical plugs are near the ground because things you plug into them where big and the cords for them where near the ground.  So to make plugs usable, they put them down near the ground.  Now with cell phones chargers, laptops, etc... Appliances are a lot smaller and having a plug near the ground is not usable.  Many do not realize this and life goes on.  Instead of changing and putting plugs in the middle of a wall, we still put them near the floor.

So to understand usability around us raises our awareness of it so we can make the world better and more efficient.  I am not lobbing to make a usability profession.  I am lobbying to make a profession of usability.  It effects all of us.  Whenever we use experience in life to make anything like the 6 million dollar man as more effective, efficient, faster, and better --- we are performing usability.