The Common Industry Format: A Way for Vendors and Customers to Talk About Software Usability

Published

June 1, 2003

Author(s)

Jean C. Scholtz, Emile L. Morse, Sharon J. Laskowski, A Wichansky, K Butler, K Sullivan

Abstract

One way to encourage software developers to integrate usability engineering into their development process is for purchasers to require evidence of product usability. Until recently this presented a difficulty because usability and ¿user friendly software¿ were vague, ambiguous terms. When large corporations purchase software, they use a number of quantitative measurements in their procurement decision-making process, such as the amount of memory needed, results from standard benchmark tests, performance measures, and measures of robustness. This paper describes our efforts to provide a standard method of quantifying usability and reporting on usability testing to include it in procurement decision-making.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the 10th Annual Human-Computer Interaction Conference

Conference Dates

June 22-27, 2003

Conference Location

Crete, GR

Conference Title

HCI International

Pub Type

Conferences

Keywords

CIF, common industry format, industry reporting project, IUSR, procurement, software, standard reporting format

Citation

Scholtz, J. , Morse, E. , Laskowski, S. , Wichansky, A. , Butler, K. and Sullivan, K. (2003), The Common Industry Format: A Way for Vendors and Customers to Talk About Software Usability, Proceedings of the 10th Annual Human-Computer Interaction Conference, Crete, GR (Accessed October 10, 2025)