Working with standards organizations

In the late 1990s, I had the good fortune to be part of a significant joint effort between industry and government to create standards for usability testing. This was called the Industry Usability Reporting (IUsR) project, and it was run by the National Institutes for Standards and Technology (NIST). The idea led to the formation of a steering committee, including NIST members and industry representatives, and the organization of the first IUsR workshop in March 1998. As a result of this meeting, working groups were formed to deal with general management issues, methodology, results and product descriptions, and plot-test planning. Creating an international standard is a long and arduous process. Standards-making requires a long-term perspective, keeping in mind that standards today may not reflect the technologies of tomorrow. Overall, I consider my experience on the IUsR project to be one of the highlights of my career in human factors in general, and software usability engineering in particular.