Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard

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.

Thovtrup, Henrik and Jakob Nielsen. Alertbox (1991). Articles>User Interface>Standards>Usability

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.

Travis, David. Userfocus (2003). Articles>Usability>Standards

Change vs. Stability in Web Usability Guidelines

A remarkable 80% of findings from the Web usability studies in the 1990s continue to hold today.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Standards

Creating Standards and Strategies

I have been asked to document the standards and strategies of usability. Given my company's interest to achieve ISO 9000 certification, I thought of the benefits to have a standard and strategy that conform to an ISO standard. My research led to two standards, ISO 13407 and ISO 9241, which have become invaluable to me.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability>Standards>ISO 9000

Evolution Trumps Usability Guidelines

'Use a Search Box instead of a link to a Search page.' This is one guideline from the plethora of recently created usability guidelines to help designers produce more usable web sites. It makes sense. After all, there are more than 42 million web sites on the Internet. It should be simple to study these sites and put together a list of 'do's' and 'don'ts' that, when followed, will produce easy-to-use sites. But...

Spool, Jared M. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Standards>Web Design

Industry Usability Reporting and the Common Industry Format (ANSI-NCITS 354-2001)

The Common Industry Format (CIF) is a standard method for reporting usability test findings. The format is primarily for reporting results of formal usability tests in which quantitative measurements were collected and is particularly appropriate for summative/comparative testing. The CIF targets two audiences: usability professionals and stakeholders in an organization. Stakeholders can use the usability data to help make informed decisions concerning the release of software products or the procurement of such products. While the CIF is formally aimed for software products, it can be used for hardware usability as well.

Parush, Avi and Emile Morse. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Usability>Standards>Reports

Strategies for Usability: Putting ISO Standards to Practice  

Is your documentation and training a solution for complex product design? Whether designing software, hardware, documentation, online help, or a telecommunication network, a strategy for usability is essential to user-friendly design. Every organization has a product life cycle but not every organization is user-focused because of absence of a usability process. Where do you begin? This paper describes two ISO standards that I have used as a strategy for usability, and accompanies a presentation that demonstrates how to put the standards to practice.

Dick, David J. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Documentation>Usability>Standards

Who Cares How Pretty Web Sites Are?

A few weeks back, I wrote about why I think web standards are difficult to learn. I wrote that because I was spending 80% of my time getting my code into XHTML 1.0 and styling it with CSS so that it rendered consistently across 5 or 6 browsers. What was I doing the other 20% of the time? Creating content, of course. I was putting together what a huge percentage of my site visitors come for. When I thought about it in these terms (time spent), I felt like styling with CSS was a lot of work for comparatively little gain. After all, people will still be able to find the site, read the content, and click on the links, whether or not I’ve styled it.

Porter, Joshua. Bokardo (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Usability

International Standards for Usability Should Be More Widely Used  

Despite the authoritative nature of international standards for usability, many of them are not widely used. This paper explains both the benefits and some of the potential problems in using usability standards in areas including user interface design, usability assurance, software quality, and usability process improvement.

Bevan, Nigel. Journal of Usability Studies (2009). Articles>Usability>Standards>International

Determining What Individual SUS Scores Mean: Adding an Adjective Rating Scale  

The System Usability Scale (SUS) is an inexpensive, yet effective tool for assessing the usability of a product, including Web sites, cell phones, interactive voice response systems, TV applications, and more. It provides an easy-to-understand score from 0 (negative) to 100 (positive). While a 100-point scale is intuitive in many respects and allows for relative judgments, information describing how the numeric score translates into an absolute judgment of usability is not known. To help answer that question, a seven-point adjective-anchored Likert scale was added as an eleventh question to nearly 1,000 SUS surveys. Results show that the Likert scale scores correlate extremely well with the SUS scores (r=0.822). The addition of the adjective rating scale to the SUS may help practitioners interpret individual SUS scores and aid in explaining the results to non-human factors professionals.

Bangor, Aaron, Philip Kortum and James Miller. Journal of Usability Studies (2009). Articles>Usability>Assessment>Standards