International Standards for HCI

Abstract

The last 20 years have seen the development of a wide range of standards related to HCI (human-computer interaction). The initial work was by the ISO TC 159 ergonomics committee (see Stewart, 2000b), and most of these standards contain general principles from which appropriate interfaces and procedures can be derived. This makes the standards authoritative statements of good professional practice, but makes it difficult to know whether an interface conforms to the standard. Reed et al. (1999) discuss approaches to conformance in these standards. ISO/IEC JTC1 has established SC35 for user interfaces, evolving out of work on keyboard layouts. This group has produced standards for icons, gestures, and cursor control, though these do not appear to have been widely adopted. More recently, usability experts have worked with the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 software-engineering subcommittee to integrate usability into software engineering and software-quality standards. This has required some compromises: for example, reconciling different definitions of usability by adopting the new term quality in use to represent the ergonomic concept of usability (Bevan, 1999). It is unfortunate that at a time of increasing expectations of easy access to information via the Internet, international standards are expensive and difficult to obtain. This is an inevitable consequence of the way standards bodies are financed. Information on how to obtain standards can be found in Table 4