Incorporating standards and guidelines in an approach that balances usability concerns for developers and end users

Human–computer interaction (HCI) guidelines are intended to help developers create usable systems for end users. However, these guidelines must first be usable for developers before they can improve the usability for end users. Unfortunately there is no requirement that HCI guidelines are usable themselves. The recent proliferation of HCI guidelines has added to the usability problems of HCI guidelines for developers. In order to get over these problems, developers need help in integrating the many available guidelines within their development process in a usable manner. The Usability First methodology helps the user to identify appropriate sources of guidance including experimentation, style guides, guidelines and standards. It also includes a variety of specific guidelines and references to major HCI standards.