Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This WG6 of the TC159 published some of the most important standards on usability,
such as
•
ISO 9241-11 (1998):
This standard provided practitioners with the concept definition
of usability and three subconcepts: effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Today,
this is regarded as the world standard in terms of the definition of usability.
•
ISO 9241-171 (2008):
This standard is also important for its definition of the HCD
and UX. The description of how it can be achieved is also an important part of this
standard. The four-stage model of HCD, including (1) understanding and specify-
ing the context of use, (2) specifying the user requirements, (3) producing design
solutions, and (4) evaluating the designs against requirements, is a world-famous
scheme today.
•
ISO/TR 18529 (2000):
This document is a first attempt to expand the scope of HCD
from just the design that ISO 9241-171 described to the whole life cycle and speci-
fied set of methods that should be adopted in each activity.
•
ISO/TR 16982 (2002):
This document presents sets of methods that should be
adopted in each stage of the HCD process as described in ISO 9241-210; however,
there is still argument regarding the validity of the description.
•
ISO/PAS 18152 (2003):
This document, known as ISO/TR 16982 (2002), is an exten-
sion of the HCD concept and of the approach to the life cycle. This standard pro-
posed a human-systems (HS) model for the assessment of the maturity of an
organization in performing the processes that make a system usable, healthy, and
safe. This process is composed of four human-systems components: HS.1, life-
cycle involvement; HS.2, human factors integration; HS.3, usability engineering
(the same as that described in ISO 9241-210); and HS.4, human resources.
The standards described above are focused on good design process. Another series of
standards aims to introduce the concept of “ease of operation”: ISO 20282-1 (2006a), ISO/
TS 20282-2 (2006b), ISO/PAS 20282-3 (2007a), and ISO/PAS 20282-4 (2007b). These standards
refer to the usability of everyday products in which the ease of operation is defined as the
functionality of the product and correct operation of the user interface is strictly linked to
usability. However, there is still an international debate on the adequate position of these
standards.
Another set of standards on usability came from the committee JTC 1 on information
technology, and in particular from the group SC 7 on software and systems engineering.
•
ISO/IEC 25062 (2006c):
This standard defines the document format for usability
testing as an evaluation method. The point here is that ISO 9241-11 (1998) provided
the key concepts, especially on the definition of usability concept, and ISO
9241-171 (2008) showed the process on how to conduct the HCD. Following on
from ISO 9241-171 (2008), other usability standards and documents appeared such
as ISO/TR 18529 (2000), ISO/PAS 18152 (2003), ISO/TR 16982 (2002), the ISO 20282
(2006a) series, and ISO/IEC 25062 (2006c). Now, some of them are going to be reor-
ganized as the ISO 9241-200 series including 210, 220, and 230 (2010). Part 200 is
planned so as to redefine related concepts.
This brief overview underlines how the concept of usability is extended and related to
many dimensions of HCI. In particular, in analyzing the usability-related standards there
