Earlier this week, my friend Jessica asked me if CMU was doing anything for World Usability Day. “What’s World Usability Day?” I asked in reply. In retrospect, it seems pretty lame that an HCI practitioner at one of the top notch HCI schools is unaware that a day has been established to celebrate his profession.

But maybe not. If you check out the World Usability Day website, there is a handy map of activities going on around the world to celebrate usability. Notice the glaring lack of activity in California and Georgia. Nothing’s going on at Berkeley, Stanford, Georgia Tech, or CMU - schools I considered to be my top choices back when I was applying. So what’s going on?

One explanation could be that World Usability Day is sponsored by the Usability Professionals Association, which is focused more on applying HCI principles in industry, rather than the research concerns of most of the schools I mention. Even though my program is more professionally-oriented, I suppose it’s reasonable that the UPA didn’t make a huge effort to notify schools about this day and encourage their participation.

On the bright side, usability is getting some press. USA Today had a fun article about usability yesterday. I’ll look past missing the first ever World Usability Day if the work environment I enter in 7 months is more pumped about what I do.