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In support of World Usability Day on 12 November 2009, Cogapp, the user experience and digital media company, is launching a competition for UK charities and environmental organisations. The prize is a day’s free website user-testing and usability consultancy designed to improve their website’s effectiveness. The competition opens on 12 November and closes 26 November – entrants must write a brief summary of how their organisation could benefit from this website usability MOT and send it to UXcomp@.... The winner will be notified by 10 December.

The winning organisation’s website usability MOT will include four one-on-one in-depth user testing sessions with a targeted audience group, which can be observed. This is followed by a usability workshop and the development of a usability action plan on how to improve their website’s effectiveness. The testing is intended to take place at Cogapp’s two-room observation lab in Brighton although Cogapp will take a flexible approach depending on the chosen organisation’s location.

Pete Gale, head of user experience at Cogapp said: “It’s crucial for charity and environmental organisations to engage with their audience and clearly get their message across in every way, including online. Cogapp’s competition on World Usability Day has been set up to showcase how good usability can help charities and environmental groups improve their website’s effectiveness in engaging target audiences.”

World Usability Day is the initiative of the Usability Professional’s Association and has been celebrated globally every year since 2005 with a focus on helping to make the world work better and "Make Life Easy" and user friendly. It is focused on humanising technology and ensuring technologies are developed in a way that serves people first. It supports good usability research, development and practice.

Cogapp has delivered user research and consultancy for Macmillan Cancer Support, Arthritis Research Campaign, Transport for London, Business Link, The National Archives and the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games/London 2012 among many others. The team are members of the Usability Professionals Association and were awarded the Digital Media Award 2008 for User Experience work on the British Museum's website, having doubled unique visitors, visits and page views within six months.