The Usability Paradox of the Human Factors Standard

One goal of a human factors design standard is to facilitate the development of consistent and usable systems. Ironically, human factors standards can plagued with the same issues that they are trying to prevent in systems, specifically, poor usability. This can be called the usability paradox. Poor usability in standards is likely to result in human factors requirements not being integrated into system development. This paper describes initial efforts to address the usability paradox in a specific standard. Researchers analyzed user data, then surveyed users to identify usability shortfalls and identify potential usability enhancements.