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Usability Certification

Usability of Products for VDU Work | General Usability | Usability Certificates at SAP

By Ulrich Kreichgauer, SAP AG, Usability Engineering Center – Updated: May 19, 2006

For SAP customers, this document is also available on the SAP Service Marketplace.

Usability of Products for VDU Work

Usability is included as a standardized concept in DIN EN ISO 9241-11. It starts with the assumption that products give the user effective, efficient, and appropriate support in completing tasks in the context of their use.

Employers must examine and evaluate a user's video display unit (VDU) workstation to assess whether the products deployed (such as software, monitors and furnishings) and the environment (including lighting and room temperature) meet the existing guidelines, statutes, directives, and ISO standards.

To check software conformity, the German Technology Accreditation Body (DATech) has worked out a test procedure based on the concept of usability. The DATech Usability Test Procedure is based on testing software packages in the context of their use (installed, configured, customized by the customer, and personalized by the end user).

At this point we must distinguish between two aspects of usability: general usability (Benutzbarkeit in German) and usability for individual users (Gebrauchstauglichkeit).

A software manufacturer can take general usability into account by constructing the software so that the standard delivery supports typical users and processes, and company-specific software tailoring is also possible through adjustable components. In addition, manufacturers must fulfill requirements that are unrelated to the context of use, for example, appropriate use of colors and font sizes, and choice of interface elements that are themselves usable.

Usability for individual users can only be evaluated in the context of the software's use – on site at a real user's workstation. Therefore, by definition, a software manufacturer like SAP cannot assess this aspect of usability. SAP can only guarantee the general usability of the delivered software and try to ensure usability for individual users by analyzing anticipated usage and preparing corresponding configuration and customizing options.

General Usability

In this document, it is not possible to list all SAP's measures for ensuring the general usability of software. Therefore, we include just the following key points:

Activities supporting general usability are an integral part of the SAP development process. End users are integrated at different phases of this development process (through site visits, user days, and usability tests) to achieve software design suited to the users and their tasks. Although users are integrated in this way, usability for individual users is not addressed. Instead, with the resulting data, SAP defines personas and makes decisions concerning general usability.
Internal SAP usability style guides take into account official, usability-relevant product standards and are a mandatory part of the development of SAP products.
A number of SAP's own usability specialists, both in development and central positions, monitor usability-relevant activities in the company. This monitoring extends from the product idea to final lab tests covering anticipated usage.

As these examples show, SAP takes concrete steps to ensure the general usability of its software, both in the developed products themselves and in the internal processes and organizational structures associated with them. These steps ensure the high usability of SAP software products. You can find more details about SAP product style guides and usability processes in the SAP Design Guild.

Usability Certificates at SAP

Zertifikat TÜV 1999

Zertifikat TÜV 1997

There are two types of usability tests for certification:

Testing the usability of a product on the basis of ISO 9241 at an individual user's workstation
Testing the development processes for a product on the basis of ISO 13407

Because SAP software is configured and customized for each context of use (for example, each organization using the software), TÜV Rheinland Berlin Brandenburg – Germany's leading technical testing and certification authority - does not conduct testing based on ISO 9241 as part of the SAP development processes; it waits until the configuration and customizing at the user organization is complete.

TÜV Rheinland Berlin Brandenburg has, however, carried out testing and certification of the product development process based on ISO 13407 since 2001, and was already involved with SAP prior to these activities:

In 1997, after exhaustive testing, TÜV Rheinland Berlin Brandenburg confirmed that SAP had adopted a development process that took into account aspects of software ergonomics. This resulted in products that met typical standards of general usability. The certification was valid for a year and was re-issued in a slightly changed format after it's expiration in 1999.
After the expiration of the second certificate, TÜV Rheinland was unable to conduct any further tests because the basis for testing and certifying software development processes was under revision at DATech.
The revision of the new DATech basis for testing and certifying was completed in Summer 2001. It assumes that testing development processes for all aspects of usability requires monitoring the entire process – from manufacturer (SAP), to customizing agent (typically an organization outside SAP), to the user training (typically undertaken by the user organization).

Such testing of the entire development process has to be carried out in cooperation with all parties involved. SAP is not working towards a certification of this type because the aspect of usability for individual users can only be tested at the users' workstations.

As described above, SAP can only influence what we refer to here as the general usability of its software products, and not the usability for individual users. Therefore SAP cannot assess compliance with the stipulated guidelines, statutes, and directives. For this reason, SAP has no further plans to obtain usability certificates at present.

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