Today is World Usability Day, a day dedicated to bringing together communities around the world in an effort to address how technology is being designed with a user-first mindset. Usability–or the lack thereof–is a silent, global issue that impacts the way 7.3 billion people all over the world live and work.

Usability, in the broad sense, is key to everything from IT systems, tech products, and digital services to public sector services and architecture. It’s how designers turn raw technology into the products and experiences that we rely on daily. But when usability gets ignored, everyone suffers. Think about the last time you waited in line for hours at the airport. Or your daily ritual of fumbling with packaging. We are in the throes of a usability crisis. Just consider how many solutions are not human-shaped (designed to make experiences easier, pleasant, and even magical), but human-proof (built in a way to make them impossibly complex and confusing):

Airport security

Clamshell packaging from hell, which can actually send people to the hospital

Logging on to new Wi-Fi networks that log us off when we’re not looking

Booking flights, or even worse, changing your ticket

Withdrawing cash from a foreign ATM

Pairing, and re-pairing, Bluetooth devices

Validation systems at parking lots (in which you don’t know where to dip your credit card or where the ticket comes out)

The Origins Of The Problem

So many of the products, services and systems that we interact with on a daily basis are envisioned and developed based on a “system first” approach. The general philosophy is, “Let’s make the tech work first, then the end-users will follow and adapt afterwards.” Look at the automated call centers, which major banks and utility companies use, and which force users to sit through endless recordings before dispatching a human voice through. If we continue to focus on analyzing project specifications, as opposed to understanding user expectations, we will continue to take steps in the wrong direction.

Solutions

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Apple helped raise the bar for usable and enjoyable technology, developing a line of products that is beautiful, functional and easy to use (though as the eminent usability experts Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini point out, the company has slipped some). The same can be said of Airbnb, which provided a simple, easy-to-use solution to a complex problem.

And we need to continue moving in this direction. Here are four ideas that can help us shift focus from simply developing and designing more stuff, to designing better stuff.