International Standards for Usability Should Be More Widely Used
Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 4, Issue 3, May 2009, pp. 106-113
Article Contents
Different Types of International Standards
One of the main purposes of international standards is to impose consistency, compatibility, and safety. An example is standards to ensure that a cell phone will accept your SIM card, produce transmissions that are compatible with the cell networks, and not create radiation that would be dangerous to you. What about usability? The user interface of some cell phones seems unnecessarily complex. How many of the functions of your cell phone do you know how to use? Is this an area where international standards could help? While we as consumers may become frustrated, many manufacturers regard this as a design issue open for market competition.
How can one create standards for usability where there are so few absolutes? We all know that usability depends on the context of use, design environment, resources constraints, importance of usability, etc. International standards have resolved these problems in different ways in different areas. Each of the four areas below is discussed in more detail in the following sections.
- User interface design. Developing international standards that define elements of the software user interface is a challenge. An attempt to produce a standard for graphical user interface “drivability” failed long ago (IEEE, 1993). So standards for user interface design have taken the approach of providing conditional guidelines, where designers are expected to judge the applicability of each guideline.
- Usability assurance. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines usability in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Usability assurance standards provide guidelines and some requirements on how to prepare, run, and document usability tests to make sure products are usable.
- Usability and software quality. Usability has also been integrated into standards for software quality.
- Human centered design process. These standards describe the activities that should be carried out in order to achieve good user interface design and good usability. They provide a basis for defining good practice in usability and have wide applications.