usability professionals’ association

Back in August we hosted a very successful workshop (Led by Brian Sullivan) that focused on User Experience sketching and collaboration. It was a great workshop and generated great ideas on how to illustrate the savings that could be had by changing your traditional filament light bulbs to LED light bulbs.

I (Ryan Plesko) then went a step forward and mashed up the top five sketches into a high-fidelity mockup. Seen below:

Well, not leaving well enough alone, Brian (and Joshua Bright) went and started a conversation with some LED manufacturers and distributors to get a slew of bulbs to give away in support of “Designing for a Sustainable World.” And since that was underway, that meant this was moving from concept to reality.

Brian wrote a great post on “eating our own dog food” that featured a chalkmark test of the initial mockup. This resulted in some slight changes and, since there were no free bulbs to give away when we started this, we now had to design a call to action for the final product.

After weeks of negotiation and conference calls, we managed to get 1,000 free bulbs from Next Generation Lighting and Seoul Semiconductor to give away. So the final design was hacked into HTML/CSS and jQuery and deployed to the World Usability Day website. Here’s a screen shot of the final product:

You can get your free bulb (you still have to pay shipping and handling) by entering WUD2009 in the comments section of the shopping cart after you click “Get a Free Bulb” on the World Usability Day website. Unfortunately, we had no control over the usability and experience of the shopping cart, but rest assured, you will only be charged for the shipping and handling. And not until the bulb is shipped. I promise.

(I’m also working on a better solution for fulfillment, stay tuned)