Are standards like ISO 9241 "Ergonomics of Human System Interaction" of any relevance in the industry? Are there examples of certified software products? And would you do a certification of your software products?
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If your customer is government or very large corporation that really needs the certification, yes do it. But remember to make a good assesment of the work and cost, as it won't be trivial and likely boring, so I wouldn't take the request lightly – Robert Gould Nov 06 '09 at 10:49
2 Answers
It is a useful read, and has some applicability to UI. But I wouldn't go through the trouble to certify an application. General rule of thumb is don't waste efforts that won't increase user base and their satisfaction. But as I said there are lessons to be learned that will benefit your users such as placing related functioonality close by and suff like that.

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It depends by what you mean with "the industry". If you have, as you say, a customer that demands it then you have no choice or you don't get the contract. There are a couple of "industries", e.g. government, telecommunication, airlines etc. that demand and support these kind of standards for a good reason. These standards are not just some more or less funny reads but define the basic elements and patterns for UIs and human-computer-interaction. If you write a specification or an RFI for an application or service that has a UI, you don't need to define each and every aspect but just refer to the standard document. This is very clear, both for the contractee as well as for the contractor.

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