Ergonomics user interface standards: are they more trouble than they are worth?

The purpose of this paper is to review the history, progress and results of one area of international standardization--the ergonomics of human-system interaction. It is a personal perspective based on my experiences as Chairman of ISO/TC159/SC4 over the past 17 years. The paper starts with some historical background and summarizes the main work of the Committee. It then identifies five areas where the results of the standardization work could have been more successful and discusses what went wrong. These problems include the long time-scale for development, how the standards were misunderstood, how political the process can be, how we may have tried to be too clever and how the abundance of help at times may have been a problem. The paper concludes with an explanation of why the activity and the results were not all bad. The five positive areas include the benefits that can come from the slow pace of the work, the benefits of structure and formality, why standards do not have to be restrictive, how the standards themselves are only part of the outcome and how being a truly international experience makes it all worthwhile.