Interntional standards
Unlike user-centred design - which is a way of ensuring that the usability of a system or product is good - usability is the subject of various ISO standards. These standards can be categorised as primarily concerned with:
Two key international standards further define usability (and see ISO 13407 for more information): :
ISO 9241-11
"[Usability refers to] the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of user."
ISO 13407
"Human-centred design is characterized by: the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements; an appropriate allocation of function between users and technology; the iteration of design solutions; multi-disciplinary design."
Resources
Usability is big business these days. Free-to-air web resources - which used to proliferate only a couple of years ago - now don't, because the relevant authors have written books and now hope that people will buy the words that they used to publish for free.
Good usability websites | Usability.gov |
| Interaction Design |
| Jacob Neilson's site |
 |
Good usability books | Norman, Donald A. (2002). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-06710-7. |
Jakob Nielsen (1994) Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, ISBN 0-12-518406-9 |
|
