About CUDA

Our Mission

• Support the design, development, and use of instructional and productivity technology products and tools in Education, Industry, and Government.
• Develop empirically based standards and procedures for evaluating usability and accessibility in both software product development and use.
• Train others in the "user-centered" approach to interface and instructional design, usability and accessibility testing methods, and human factors project management.

Our Goals

• Promote the development of high-quality and usable and accessible software products and web sites.
• Provide the "human factors" reasons for problems uncovered by usability evaluations.
• Provide recommendations for improving the usability and accessibility of the product(s) or web site(s) being evaluated.

Our Guiding Principles

• Usability and accessibility testing should be done early and often, beginning in the design stages and continuing throughout the product development life cycle.
• Done well, usability and accessibility testing saves both time and money.
• Usability testing is an essential part of Quality Control and Continuous Process Improvement.
• Improving accessibility often increases usability.

Our History

CUDA was established in the Fall of 1996.  Our evaluation services have been used by:

• educational institutions such as the CSU Office of the Chancellor
• colleges and universities in the CSU System
• the Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) at Sonoma State.
• government agencies such as national and local Veterans Administrations
• private industry including companies such as the Addison-Wesley Longman, Inc., Southern California Edison, Honda, and First American Real Estate.

CUDA's ties to California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) graduate studies

In addition to being a usability lab testing facility, CUDA is a practicum and basic research site for the CSULB graduate program in Psychology (link opens a new site), Human Factors and Applied Experimental options.

Human Factors in Usability