World Usability Day - Ohio (and Michigan)

We have not finalized our plans for the November 14th World Usability Day activity in northwest Ohio (it will be small), but if you are in the area, there are lots of "regional" events you can go to if you are willing to drive 2 hours.

To the north is a full day conference at Michigan State University (serving the whole state of Michigan).

• 9:00am - 5:15pm: World Usability Day for USA - Michigan - workshops on communities and web usability, talks on automotive issues, podcasting, and collaboration
• Detailed program (MSU Usability & Accessiblity Center)
• Sponsors include: Michigan Usability Professionals, Michigan-Ohio Human-Computer Interaction, Southeastern Michigan Technical Communicators

To the east are two events in northeast Ohio: a daytime event at Kent State University and an evening session at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

• Noon - 2:00pm - Everyday Usability - Eyetracking demonstrations, Usbaility awareness games
• Sponsored by: Kent State Information Architecture and Knowledge Management
• 6:00pm - 8:00pm - Northeast Ohio World Usability Day - Informal roundtable discussions of Accessibility, Web 2.0, User research, Remote usability testing, and more
• Sponsored in part by: Northeast Ohio Usability Professionals

To the southeast, there is 1 event in Columbus, at Nationwide Insurance. (October 30 update: this event is for Nationwide employees only. I will let you know if there is anything open to the public in Columbus.)

• Nationwide Insurance Usability Day Recognition - an informal booth for most of the day with a 2 hour panel in the afternoon

To the south, LexisNexis in Dayton is hosting a conference.

• 10:00am - 4:45pm - Workshops on Cognitive work analysis for design, Ethnography and design, and Converging perspectives on data
• 5:30pm - 9:30pm - Southern Ohio World Usability Day - Posters, dinner, panel on Exploratory research to inform design and innovation, and break-out sessions
• Sponsored by: Tristate Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Some parts of Indiana are within a 2-hour drive, but the Indiana World Usability Day 2006 Conference is farther, in Indianapolis.

Also, you can partiicpate in World Usability Day without leaving your home or office, via Webcasts & Podcasts. There are some webcast-only events and several local events are being broadcast so that you can attend online. Note that some of these webcasts might take place on November 13th for us here in the Eastern US time zone.

Later, I will send out news about our local gathering here on my blog and also at NWOACM (the local group sponsoring it).