The Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports, developed jointly by ITL's Information Access Division (IAD) and industry, has been approved as ISO Standard 25062 “Software Engineering- Software Quality and Requirements Evaluation - Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports”. IAD's Mary Theofanos addressed final comments of ISO members at the ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 Software and Systems Engineering Plenary, in Helsinki, Finland May 23-27, 2005, leading to ISO final approval in June. This Common Industry Format (CIF) provides a format for describing usability testing of a product, including the experimental design of the tests, tasks to be performed, test participants, data collection methods and usability measures (such as objective measures of effectiveness, efficiency, and the amount of effort for learning how to use the product successfully). Development of the CIF began in 1997 when NIST first brought together representatives from major software suppliers and customer organizations to form the Industry Usability Reporting Project (IUSR). The CIF was developed, test piloted, and then approved by ANSI/INCITS in December 2001. The CIF represents a new, pioneering approach to insuring software quality: an approach based on user-centered testing of software. Companies such as Boeing, Microsoft, and Oracle are using this reporting standard. It is also being applied to national voting systems, federal government procurements, and is being included in university curricula.

Contact: Mary Theofanos, ext. 5889