scope:

This part of ISO 9241 provides guidance for assessing the visual ergonomics of display technologies with user performance test methods (as opposed to the optical test methods given in ISO 9241-305). Its use will help to ensure that, for a given context of use, a display meets minimum visual ergonomics requirements. It covers only visual attributes and does not address the ergonomics or usability of the whole product that houses a visual display.

The general principles laid down by this part of ISO 9241 apply to any colour or monochrome visual display attached to a system with which human beings interact. This includes, but is not limited to, visual displays used with desktop and portable computers, those used on mobile devices such as mobile telephones, digital cameras and personal digital assistants, and status displays used on consumer electronics equipment such as printers, in-car navigation systems and microwave ovens. It extends the basic idea of the visual performance and comfort test specified in ISO 9241-3:1992/Amd.1:2000 to the use of the performance and judgment of the display end users themselves for evaluating the quality of a display, and includes a more diverse range of technologies, users, tasks and environments.

Because of this diversity, it is not feasible for this part of ISO 9241 to stipulate a single, generic test method that can be used with all display technologies. Instead, the basic principles for generating a test method are given. This method will be valid for evaluating specific displays in specific contexts of use: the method generated according to Clause 8 is applicable only to tasks involving the handling and processing of text. No other examples are given. An essential property of the process is that it permits the verification of the usability of a visual display for a representative task, performed by representative users, taking their performance and judgment as measured quality values. It does not, however, permit the measurement of specific perceptual attributes such as luminance contrast or display flicker in isolation.

The main users of this part of ISO 9241 will be those who procure displays or who need to measure display performance during product development. Its application assumes a background in behavioural science.