The usability assurance statement-a new ISO standard and a new approach

Many groups in the world are busy defining prescriptive standards for the look, feel and behaviour of the user interface. These standards may ensure conformance to an ergonomic feature set, but they do not in themselves ensure product usability. Within ISO (International Standards Organisation) TC.159/SC4 is a working group (WG5) concerned with standards for the software user interface. A sub-group of this group is working on a standard for a usability assurance statement. Essentially this is a standard framework for agreements between producers and consumers about intended or actual product usability. The paper introduces the usability assurance statement standard. It explains the approach and why it helps assure usability. Finally, it shows how this standard compliments prescriptive approaches.<>