ABSTRACT
Design and usability standards are difficult to create and hard to enforce. Although many groups have tried to create general design standards or patterns, the diversity of industry and content has made it difficult to create strong standards to embody usability knowledge and practice. The chapter discusses the popular usability standards and two governmental programs, and consider how effective they have been in both fostering good usability practice and in creating an international consensus on practice. By looking at what they attempted to standardize and how well they have been adopted by industry, we can see some of the strengths and weaknesses of standards as an influence on industry practice. The three standards we will examine are User-centered design is the common name for a process for designing the user interface for software and other products. The standards and guidelines that have been discussed in this chapter are just a few of the many that exist or are being developed.
