NIST SPONSORS INDUSTRY USABILITY REPORTING WORKSHOP.With industry participation, NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. developed a Common Industry Format (CIF (1) (Common Intermediate Format) A standard video format used in videoconferencing. CIF formats are defined by their resolution, and standards both above and below the original resolution have been established. The original CIF is also known as Full CIF (FCIF). ) for Usability Test Reports to provide a means for usability engineers to report results of their usability testing Usability testing is a means for measuring how well people can use some human-made object (such as a web page, a computer interface, a document, or a device) for its intended purpose, i.e. usability testing measures the usability of the object. . In November 2000, NIST sponsored the 4th Industry Usability Reporting (IUSR IUSR Internet User ) Workshop to further the progress in reporting usability. The NIST IUSR project seeks to improve the testing and reporting of software product usability Product usability A concept in product design, sometimes referred to as ease of use or user-friendliness, that is related directly to the quality of the product and indirectly to the productivity of the work force. and thereby reduce the uncontrolled costs of poor usability. Attendees included prominent industry representatives from software suppliers and organizations with large software procurements. Several IUSR participants have been performing pilot tests on the current version of the CIF to determine how well it works for usability reporting and to determine its usefulness in software procurement. Tests covered business applications, Web usability, and a variety of consumer software. Pilot testing was performed in conjunction with a partner, so that customer/ supplier pairs each tested the CIF and collected data about its use. The CIF has proven to be stable under a variety of test types during the pilot tests and were prepared for submission into the standardization process of the National Committee of Information Technology Standards (NCITS See ITI. ) in January 2001. While the CIF has only been applied to software usability in pilot testing so far, many of the workshop participants believe that the scope of the CIF should be extended to cover user testing of hardware. The suitability of applying the CIF for hardware testing is under further study. More information is available at http://www.nist.gov/iusr. |
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