How ISO Develops International Standards

The organisation 

ISO, the International Organisation for Standardisation, is the world's largest developer and publisher of International Standards. Its members are the national standards institutes of 158 countries, one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system.

Its standards development work is conducted by Technical Committees (TC) and Sub-Committees (SC) which meet every year or so and are attended by formal delegations from participating members of that committee.  In practice, the technical work takes place in Working Groups (WG) of experts, nominated by national standards committees but expected to act as independent experts.  Most national standards bodies set up ‘mirror committees’ to coordinate their input to the international work.

Steps to create a finished standard 

Here are the main steps involved in creating an International Standard.

• The work starts when a New Work Item (NWI) is proposed identifying a suitable topic for standardisation.  This proposal document is circulated for vote to the appropriate TC or SC.  (ISO/TC159/SC4 is the sub-committee which deals with Human-System Interaction).
• If approved, it is passed to a WG to be developed into a Working Draft (WD) which is a partial or complete first draft of the text of the proposed standard.  The work is usually done by a project editor with members of the WG.
• The first formal stage is to produce and circulate a Committee Draft (CD) and circulate it for comment and approval within the committee and the national mirror committees.  It is not unusual for a second CD to be required if there is significant disagreement over the first CD. 
• The first public stage is a Draft International Standard (DIS) which is circulated widely for public comment via the national standards bodies. 
• Once this is approved and any relevant comments addressed, it is issued as Final Draft International Standard.  At this stage, no further substantive comments are permitted, only a final go/no go vote. 
• Eventually, (under ISO rules, each stage takes a minimum period of time from 3 to 6 months to allow for full review in each country) a final International Standard (IS) is published.

Advantages and disadvantages 

International Standards are developed slowly, by consensus, using extensive consultation and development processes.  This has its disadvantages in such a fast moving field as user interface design and some have criticised any attempts at standardisation as premature.  However, there are areas where a great deal is known, which can be made accessible to designers through appropriate standards, and there are approaches to user interface standardisation, based on human characteristics, which are relatively independent of specific technologies.

The practical discipline of having to achieve consensus helps us moderate some of the wilder claims of user interface enthusiasts and helps ensure that the resulting standards do represent good practice. 

The slow development process means that standards can seldom represent the leading edge of design.  Nonetheless, properly written, they should not inhibit helpful creativity.

Get involved 

If you would like to get involved yourself, contact Tom Stewart, Chairman of ISO/TC159/SC4 and he will tell you what you need to do.