In the scope of World Usability Day, Noldus Information Technology organized a series of free events in our main office in Wageningen, The Netherlands. Around 40 participants from different companies and institutes attended the interactive seminar 'Getting the most from usability testing tools', given by our usability consultant Tobias Heffelaar. The seminar dealt with various usability topics, such as different ways to speed up tests and optimized data acquisition using tools like Eye Trackers and Event loggers. Other topics were easy ways to analyze generated data and how to present your findings in such a way that it will get your message across. The seminar ended with a discussion of new developments that could facilitate usability testing.

In the afternoon a number of exciting demonstrations took place. A usability test of the Novib (Oxfam Netherlands) website was conducted live. Since they are preparing a name change, their current site will be reconstructed. The tests gave them a series of useful tips for improvements in their new site. Participants could join the observers and watch a usability test from the observation room in our brand new Experience Lab. Also tools for collecting multimodal data (like eye-tracking data, physiological data, etc.) were demonstrated. Finally usability expert Gerard van Os (Glacimonto) conducted two expert reviews of websites. Both cases were suggested by participants of the meeting who volunteered to have their site reviewed. One was a Dutch site (www.bouwjeeigenbrug.nl) for municipal officials who are involved in planning and constructing bridges in their community. The second case was a site from a Spanish technology institute, ITI (www.iti.upv.es). Since this is a Spanish language site this was a special challenge for Gerard, but it turned out a true expert can even review a site in a language he doesn't speak!

Between the events the participants enjoyed a nice lunch in the grand café of the Noldus building. After the demonstrations drinks were also served in the grand café. This was a good moment to evaluate a successful World Usability Day at Noldus!