Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
http://www.useit.com/papers/standards.html

Thovtrup, Henrik and Jakob Nielsen
Alertbox
1991

Abstract:

User interface standards can be hard to use for developers. In a laboratory experiment, 26 students achieved only 71% compliance with a two page standard; many violations were due to influence from previous experience with non-standard systems. In a study of a real company's standard,developers were only able to find 4 of 12 deviations in a sample system, and three real products broke between 32% and 55% of the mandatory rules in the standard. Designers were found to rely heavily on the examples in the standard and their experience with other user interfaces.