The standards provide an authoritative source of reference, but designers without usability experience have great difficulty applying these types of guidelines (de Souza and Bevan 1990)PDF. To apply guidelines successfully, designers need to understand the design goals and benefits of each guideline, the conditions under which the guideline should be applied, the precise nature of the proposed solution, and any procedure that must be followed to apply the guideline. Parts 12 to 17 contain a daunting 82 pages of guidelines, but even then do not provide all this information for every guideline.
Several checklists have been prepared to help assess conformance of software to the main principles in ISO 9241 (Gediga 1999, Oppermann and Reiterer 1997, Prümper 1999).
Part 10: Dialogue principles (1996)
This part deals with general ergonomic principles which apply to the design of dialogues between humans and information systems: suitability for the task, suitability for learning, suitability for individualisation, conformity with user expectations, self descriptiveness, controllability, and error tolerance.
Part 12: Presentation of information (1998)
This part contains recommendations for presenting and representing information on visual displays. It includes guidance on ways of representing complex information using alphanumeric and graphical/symbolic codes, screen layout, and design as well as the use of windows.
Part 13: User guidance (1998)
This part provides recommendations for the design and evaluation of user guidance attributes of software user interfaces including prompts, feedback, status, on-line help and error management.
Part 14: Menu dialogues (1997)
This part provides recommendations for the design of menus used in user-computer dialogues. The recommendations cover menu structure, navigation, option selection and execution, and menu presentation (by various techniques including windowing, panels, buttons, fields, etc.).
Part 15: Command dialogues (1997)
This part provides recommendations for the design of command languages used in user-computer dialogues. The recommendations cover command language structure and syntax, command representations, input and output considerations, and feedback and help.
Part 16: Direct manipulation dialogues (1999)
This part provides recommendations for the ergonomic design of direct manipulation dialogues, and includes the manipulation of objects, and the design of metaphors, objects and attributes. It covers those aspects of Graphical User Interfaces that are directly manipulated, and not covered by other parts of ISO 9241.
Part 17: Form filling dialogues (1998)
This part provides recommendations for the ergonomic design of form filling dialogues. The recommendations cover form structure and output considerations, input considerations, and form navigation.
