Interactions - January/February 2010

FORUM INTERACTING WITH PUBLIC POLICY

Standards and Technology (NIST) is involved in
measurement and metrics related to voting, bio-
metrics, and usability testing. The U.S. Access
Board sets the standards for Section 508. And
this doesn’t even touch on state-level laws and
policies related to interaction design. Many states
now have laws related to the two big design-
related policy topics, voting machines, and Web
accessibility. Public policy is complex and it
changes rapidly. Since magazine articles must
be submitted a few months before publication,
my hope is that none of this is out of date by the
time you read it. I guess, if you work in technol-
ogy, you are used to print publications being a
little bit out of date.

What Can You Do?

This is the first article for this forum. In every
issue of interactions, different authors will write
about public policy issues that impact on interac-
tion design. We will include policy issues from
around the world. Policy is about being involved.
After reading a policy article, I encourage you
to contact those involved in writing it. Also, try
to learn more about the issues. And if you have
some knowledge on a given topic, get involved,
talk to legislators in your country, serve on local,
national, and international organizations that
have advisory and standards committees. There is
a great need around the world for knowledgeable
interaction designers to engage with their local
policy makers. Think globally, act locally…. I really
like how that sounds for our community. Now, if
I can just decide if it’s better for the environment
to eat organic produce or locally grown produce. I
still haven’t figured that one out.

For more info,
check out:

USACM; http://usacm. acm.org/usacm/ UPA Usability in Civic Life; http://www. usabilityprofessionals. org/civiclife/ AIGA Design for Democracy; http:// www.aiga.org/con-tent.cfm/design-for-democracy/

on Computer-Human Interaction), USACM (the
U.S. public-policy arm of ACM), the Usability
Professionals Association, and AIGA. Here’s
where it gets more complex, becoming more spe-
cific to each country. Policy comes in different
forms in each country. In the U.S., public policy
can come in the form of a law, a signing state-
ment, a regulation, an executive order, case law,
or other forms. Different agencies and organiza-
tions within the U.S. federal government can
influence public policy on interaction design. For
instance, the usability.gov website is managed
and was developed by the Department of Health
and Human Services. The National Institute of

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jonathan Lazar is a pro-
fessor in the department of computer and informa-
tion sciences at Towson University, where he
serves as director of the undergraduate program in
information systems and is founder and director of
the Universal Usability Laboratory. Lazar has pub-
lished five books, including Web Usability: A User-Centered Design
Approach (Addison-Wesley, 2006), Universal Usability (John Wiley
and Sons, 2007) and Research Methods in Human-Computer
Interaction (John Wiley and Sons, 2010). He currently serves as
national chair of the ACM SIGCHI U.S. Public Policy Committee.