Welcome to the University of Sunderland IDE@S group usability short course web site.

The usability short course is for anyone involved in the designing, developing, marketing, managing or maintaining websites. If you take usability seriously, from project managers to webmasters, this is the course for you.

Delivery of the course is flexible. The complete course comprises of four, full day workshops. These are delivered on campus in eight evening sessions. 'On-site' delivery can be arranged for multiple attendees from the same company.

The course is accredited by the University of Sunderland and successful completion carries 30 Masters Credits. There are no pre-requisites or co-requisites, nor do you need any technical knowledge for the course. The aim of the course is to give you the knowledge to develop techniques to better understand your users and add value to your products.

The course comprises of four main elements: inspection methods, understanding users, user testing and interaction design for e-business. Attendees of the course have the opportunity to develop their research and analysis skills through web-site assessment and testing.

The course develops skills and understanding of web interaction design, allowing you to work towards developing web-sites and products with usability, accessibility and branding that are appropriate for the (business) goals of the product.

The course is delivered as 'workshops' covering each of the core elements of the course with a blend of lecture material and practical exercises by experts in Human Computer Interaction, who between them, have over 40 years combined experience in consultancy and research.