Standards and guidelines

See also: design guidelines, web standards

Discussion articles

  • Bluffers' guide to ISO 9241
    In the dusty institutions where usability standards gather to party with each other, ISO 9241 is a bit of a celebrity. It is widely cited by people who would be hard pushed to name any other standard, and parts of it are virtually enshrined in law in some European countries. But as is the fate of many celebrities, all most usability professionals know about the standard is its name. This white paper describes each of the 17 parts of ISO 9241 in detail.

  • International standards for HCI and usability
    Standards related to usability can be categorised as primarily concerned with the use of the product (effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a particular context of use); the user interface and interaction; the process used to develop the product; the capability of an organisation to apply user centred design. This page provides a list of relevant standards.

  • Standards and guidelines
    A list of ISO and ANSI standards, UI design guidelines (from Microsoft, IBM, Lotus, etc.), web design guidelines and writing style guides from the STC Usability SIG.

  • Standards update: usability test reporting
    It’s a truism that even a bad usability test will help improve your software. But the findings from different usability tests are notoriously difficult to compare. This makes it difficult to track usability improvements or to see how you compare against an earlier product. An emerging international standard looks set to solve this problem.

  • User-centred design standards
    ISO standards related to usability can be categorised as primarily concerned with the use of the product (effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a particular context of use); the user interface and interaction; the process used to develop the product; and the capability of an organisation to apply user centred design.

  • Web usability: a new international standard
    ISO is developing a new standard for web usability. The new standard will be of interest to anyone who designs, evaluates or commissions web sites and it is likely to have a significant impact in improving the overall usability of the web.

  • What is the Common Industry Format (CIF)?
    The Common Industry Format (CIF) for usability test reports specifies the format for reporting the results of a summative usability evaluation. The most common type of usability evaluation is formative, i.e. designed to identify usability problems that can be fixed. A summative evaluation produces usability metrics that describe how usable a product is when used in a particular context of use. The CIF report format and metrics are consistent with the ISO 9241-11 definition of usability.

Standards

  • Section 508 standards
    Section 508 requires that when US federal agencies develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology, Federal employees with disabilities have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access and use by federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the agency.

  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
    International standards for web accessibility developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

  • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (working draft)
    A working draft of the next version of the international standards for web accessibility.