Standards for usability testing

On March 5-6, 1998, a workshop was held at the offices o f the U.S. National Institute of ~'~ Standards (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. This is of direct interest to standards watchers in the United States, and perhaps bears watching for those elsewhere. The workshop was entitled "The Application of Usability Testing Results As Procurement Criteria for Software," and was cochaired by Jean Scholtz of NIST and Keith Butler of Boeing. It was jointly sponsored by NIST and SIGCHI. The workshop is an attempt to define a standardized usability testing process and report format for the benefit of software consumer companies and software vendors.