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Vol.30 No.2, April 1998
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The column this month will be a brief update on the status of Human-Computer Interaction standards. I will return to more detailed surveys of specific committees and subjects in my next column.
Just when I thought the proliferation of activity on user interface topics in standards bodies was subsiding, recent months have shown that there's as much activity as there ever has been.
There is an interesting trend shaping up, I think: an attention to standards which define procedures and guidelines for the design process. That is, they define processes which promote user-centered design and product usability.
I can speculate that, perhaps, there is some dissatisfaction with the sort of standards document which recommends how to design specific components of a class of user interfaces. That is, documents which contain standards such as: limit the number of items in a screen menu, don't use spectrally extreme colors, allow the user to press the 1 key to skip a voice mail greeting, etc. Well, first, it is difficult to state the recommendations in these documents very strongly, because, no matter how good the advice or how well empirically supported some statements may be, the vast majority of recommendations always seem to face important exceptions. Exceptions where, if the guideline is followed, usability will suffer rather than be improved. With a large number of statements which end up not being requirements, the perception of the document's strength suffers. Secondly, the standards process has often worked slowly enough, at least with many user interface standards, that the technology they address is nearly obsolete by the time the standards are available.
Certainly, the visible success of the ISO 9000 series of standards on quality processes also bolsters interest in standards on user-centered design processes. Why can't the same approach produce success in the user interface domain?
So, let's look at the current census of usability and design process standards activity.
Most notably, ISO (The International Organization for Standardization) already has two design process standards completed. In the ISO 9241 series (covering the ergonomics of VDT workstations), Part 11 ("Guidance on Usability") of this series covers how to specify and measure usability. Usability is defined in terms of components of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction for the user. Goals and the context of use must be described in order to measure usability. Guidance is given as to the choice and interpretation of usability measures, how specify and evaluation usability in the process of design, and how to specify and measure usability for an existing product or system. ISO 9241-11 has completed its final vote, and it will likely be released within the coming year (individual parts of 9241 are being completed separately, each part is more independent than, say, the chapter of a book).
Also quite advanced in the voting process is ISO 13407, "Human-centered design processes for interactive systems," being developed by Working Group 6 of ISO TC159 SC4 (the ISO committee on ergonomics of human system interaction). Again, I believe we will see this standard available for use within the coming year. ISO 13407 the planning and management of a design process to facilitate the goal of making computer systems usable. It is directed mostly at project managers. The standard elaborates on such guidance as actively involving users in design, getting a clear understanding of user and task requirements, employing persons from a variety of disciplines and roles in the design process (e.g. user interface designers, marketing, end users, technical authors, and more), practicing iterative design processes and evaluating designs against requirements.
A trend which I was surprised to learn was new interest in user-centered design and general design principles in telecommunications standards bodies. In the US, ANSI T1 T1M1.5 is responsible for Network Management applications. In 1993, ANSI published ANSI T1.232, the so-called G-interface specification, which provided user interface design recommendations for computer systems used to control telephone and communications networks. It was carried to the international area. And it was modified in '95 with the addition examples and general principles. From there, interest in the general philosophy of user interface design has appeared in various telecommunications venues, in the SONET interoperability forum, in ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, and in ITU-T, the International Telecommunications Union standards body. In ITU-T, it is Study Group 10 which has taken on user interface design principles for network management user interfaces. (SG10 is the original arena for development of Man-Machine Language many years ago, a command language for communicating with the first generation of computers which controlled the telephone system. Interestingly, SG10 is also interested in working on user interface standards associated with the Global Information Infrastructure. But, more on that later). I will provide more detail on these activities when I cover human-computer interaction in telecommunications in a forthcoming column.
Finally, in the US, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, an agency of the US government Department of Commerce) in conjunction with ACM SIGCHI, is holding a workshop entitled "The Application of Usability Testing Results as Procurement Criteria for Software." The first meeting is scheduled in March and will consist of representatives from relevant industries in the US. A direction which this workshop will study is the definition of a minimum standards testing process for usability. Clearly, that cliché forces itself to mind: an idea whose time has come. I will report on the progress of this effort and others in future columns.
A quick report on human-computer interaction standards, i.e. the standards on specific design elements (to which I contrasted the above efforts). In ISO, ISO 9241 on the ergonomics of computer workstations, is nearly complete. The standard contains 17 parts covering the physical design of computers and terminals to guidance on the design of the user interface to computer software. Most of the parts of this document are finished, and will be getting their final votes in the coming months. The committee, ISO TC159/SC4/WG5, is finishing up work on the last of the sections. We can certainly expect ISO 9241 to be completely published very soon. Meanwhile, WG5 is in the midst of working on a standard for Multimedia systems and plans on starting work on standards on design for accessibility of computer systems to disabled users.
In the US, HFES is completing HFES 200, a human computer interaction standard which will re-distribute the software design sections of ISO 9241 as well as add new materials on accessibility, user of color in the user interface, use of speech recognition in dictation applications in office computer systems, and interactive voice response and speech recognition user interfaces as used in telephony systems. This standard will be submitted as an ANSI standard, and it is on schedule for initiation of the ANSI review and voting process (via the Canvass method) in the latter half of 1998.
Thanks to Beth Marshburn and Scott Isensee for providing some information which was included in this month's column.
Comments may be directed to Harry E. Blanchard at heb@acm.org, or by phone at +1 908 949-9745 or fax at +1 908 949-8569. Any opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily the opinions of AT&T, ACM, or SIGCHI.
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