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2008 saw the release of several international usability standards, many within the influential ISO 9241 series. Two of these standards focus on accessibility and another provides guidelines for usable web sites. This article explains why usability standards are important and summarises the 13 new parts of ISO 9241.
With the rapid development of new user interface technologies, like Web 2.0 and mobile devices, it's tempting to claim that there's a lot more to good design than simply applying standards. Although this is certainly the case, international standards in usability still have an important role to play. This is because usability standards:
ISO 9241 is one of the more important standards in usability. Originally titled "Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals", it was envisaged as a 17-part standard. But the interest in ISO 9241 encouraged the standards sub-committees to broaden its scope, to incorporate other relevant standards and to make it more usable. The title of the revised ISO 9241, "Ergonomics of human-system interaction", reflects these changes. The revised multipart standard is structured as a series of standards numbered in "hundreds" as follows:
Last year, 13 new parts were released. These parts are summarised below.
This part of ISO 9241 contains general recommendations to improve the accessibility of ICT equipment. The definition of "ICT equipment" is left deliberately vague, but includes mobile devices, computers and software. The standard promotes a framework for accessibility that has four steps.
This part of ISO 9241 presents detailed design principles for designing usable web sites. The standard covers five areas:
This part of ISO 9241 provides guidance on how to design accessible software. The scope is extremely broad. Unlike the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, this standard covers all software (not just the web) and as well as the obvious home and work domains it also explicitly includes public systems, such as kiosks. Moreover, the standard uses the term "accessibility" in a very broad context, encompassing elderly users as well as users with a temporary disability (such as someone with a broken arm).
This part of ISO 9241 is an introduction to the "300" subseries, like a foreword to a book. It is very short: the main content occupies just 4 pages.
This part of ISO 9241 simply contains a list of definitions, terms and equations that are used by the other parts in the "300" subseries. It's no more (and no less) than a display technologist's dictionary.
This part of ISO 9241 establishes image quality requirements for electronic visual displays. The requirements are deliberately generic, so they apply to any kind of display, regardless of the technology used, and they cover all users and tasks.
This part of the ISO 9241 "300" subseries is quite different from the others. Although it covers visual displays, it takes a very different approach from the other parts in the subseries. The other parts focus on optical and electronic measurements of displays, whereas this part focuses on measuring how people perform when using the display: in other words, you run a (summative) usability test.
This part of ISO 9241 describes optical test methods and expert observation techniques to evaluate a visual display against the requirements in ISO 9241-303. Weighing in at around 200 pages, this is a substantial text that contains very detailed instructions on taking display measurements.
This part of ISO 9241 will help you evaluate visual displays in the wild—for example, in offices. It is essentially a guide to ergonomic workplace assessment for visual displays.
This part of ISO 9241 is a companion part for ISO 9241-305. Again, it runs to around 200 pages and its purpose is to help you decide if your display meets the requirements.
This part of ISO 9241 is a technical report on a new kind of display technology called "Surface-Conduction Electron-Emitter Displays" or SED for short.
This part of ISO 9241 is a technical report on a new kind of display technology called "Organic Light Emitting Diode Displays" or OLED for short.
This part of ISO 9241 describes the critical design characteristics for input devices, namely keyboards, mice, pucks, joysticks, trackballs, touchpads, tablets, styli and touch sensitive screens. It's aimed at people who are actually designing these devices so that they take into account all the relevant ergonomic factors for their device. The standard covers a range of devices, so it's not surprising that this standard runs to over 100 pages.
If you need more information on ISO 9241, try "ISO 9241 for Beginners", a no-waffle, just-the-facts guide written by a standards expert with each part of ISO 9241 clearly explained on a single page.
Dr. David Travis (@userfocus) has been carrying out ethnographic field research and running product usability tests since 1989. He has published three books on user experience including Think Like a UX Researcher. If you like his articles, you might enjoy his free online user experience course.
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This article is tagged accessibility, ISO 9241, standards.
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