To celebrate World Usability Day, Human Interface Group wanted to help Belgian companies making their technology more efficient and more profitable. More than 40 companies asked for a Standby Guy and it was a tough job selecting!

How did the Standby Guys make Belgium more profitable?

• “We have had an energetic, productive, hands-on, and fun day together that was interesting for both parties.”
•  “As a Standby Guy, I handed Acerta loads of practical ideas that could easily be implemented in IT projects and in IT project management. The aim? Making Acerta’s desktop and web applications user-friendly, right from the start – thus saving development and re-development costs, OR time and money, in the end!”
• “On november 12th, this standby guy made sure future students will experience no obstacles in finding their way to the courses at Karel de Grote-Hogeschool. A perfect win-win situation for the students and the school itself.”
• “As a Standby Guy, my work will certainly help to make a visit at Nieuwsblad.be an even more enjoyable experience. It will be so much easier for readers to sign up and receive their favorite newspaper’s newsletter."
• “Thanks to the standby guy, Eurocross now knows that there are methods and tools to use in the development process of their new application to improve the user experience. If they choose to follow that path, the students that start at Eurocross in 2011 will have an application that is intuïtive and doesn’t need 4 days of training."

Anecdotes

• “At the end of the day the client showed me an application which allows electricians to make electrical schemes. People were surprised to see that I knew the build-up of such schemes so well, because of my work for Elia and it made them realize that HIG can quickly integrate in any kind of business.”
• “Everybody on the floor knew I was coming to the firm for a day, but not a lot a people knew what I would be doing. So every time I was introduced to a new person, he or she said ‘So you are the present of Koenraad’."

Favorite Quotes of our winners

• “‘Standby guy’ is a terrific initiative. It’s the perfect way to get to know Human Interface Group and to experience the added value the company can bring to a project.”
• ‘We finally understand what ‘usability’ means and how it can be useful for us’
• “Thank you for your valuable insights. I will definitely use your tips and hints.”
•  “We invest so much to attract new readers to our site, but then we seem to do more than a thing or two to scare them away again.”
• “This session was very useful and will help us to include users in our IT development process.”

Standby Guy on the Radio

Get to know what it so difficult to use your laundry machine.