A few nights ago I finally met Daniel Szuc face to face. What a great guy! We had a wonderful time tooling around Hong Kong. He took us up to a place that provided a stunning overview of the city. You would have to see it to really appreciate it, but trust me, it was wonderful.

I think one of the most important things I learned from meeting Daniel was that when a few usability minds get together, there is a lot to talk about. It is like 1 + 1 = 8 or something. I was saying things that I didn’t know I needed to say about usability. One of the most important ideas was that building usability into an organization is something that is extremely good for a company but getting that done is unbelievablely difficult. Obviously building usability into the culture during the formation of the organization is best, but what do you do if you don’t have that luxury? What can be done after the fact? What more can be done beyond training. We batted some ideas around and I hope to continue that conversation again.

Another thing we talked about was how usability as a word is still quite useful. Despite the increase in words and phrases that are similar to usability, such as user experience and customer experience, the word usability still has a lot of value. Daniel felt stronger about this than me, but I still agreed with him. It is a great word to use, especially in places where it is still more pure, such as Asia.