The History of ISO 9241

In the beginning 

I first became involved with ergonomics standards in 1982/83 when the late Paul Branton and I persuaded BSI that they should take on the secretariat of a new International Standards Organisation sub-committee under the Ergonomics Technical Committee (TC159).  BSI were reluctant to take this on but I quite found out what the problem had been.

The reason for proposing that BSI take on the secretariat of ISO/TC 159/SC4 Signals and Controls was so that we could work on a new work item entitled ‘Visual Information Processing’.  This rather curiously named work item was concerned with the ergonomics problems which operators were experiencing using Visual Display Terminals (VDTs).  Although the German national standards body (Deusches Institut fiir Normung) had published a series of standards on VDT ergonomics (DIN 66234), there was a feeling that an international standard would be valuable.

In order to persuade BSI of the seriousness of our intent, we explained that the Ergonomics Society was in fact prepared to part fund this work.  In the event, BSI agreed that it was in the interests of the UK and took on the secretariat without ES funding.  As is usual in ISO, the secretariat proposed the sub-committee chairman and I was proposed as first chairman of the newly reinvigorated TC159/SC4.
Our first meeting was in Manchester in 1983 and was attended by Susan Harker as a UK expert and Peter Crabbe as the BSI secretary.

A number of international ergonomists who are still involved in the field and good friends of mine participated in that meeting including Ahmet Cakir from Germany and Tomas Berns and Bengt Knave from Sweden.  Whilst changing planes in Copenhagen, Tomas and Bengt thought that it would be a good idea to hold an international conference to launch the first standards from this committee and decided that 1986 would give us three years – surely plenty of time.

During the meeting, Bengt was heard to mutter ‘we’ve been here for three days and still not standardised anything’.  Little did any of us realise that it would take quite so long for the seventeen part standard ISO 9241 Ergonomics requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs) to be published.  Part 17 was eventually published in 1998!

Where are we now ?

ISO 9241 has recently undergone a major revision and now has a new structure with parts numbered in hundreds (in an attempt to mirror the old structure so the 9241-3 dealt with displays so the 9241-300 series also deals with displays).  The sub-committee has continued to thrive and is now called ISO/TC159/SC4 Ergonomics of Human-System Interaction to reflect the inclusion of a great deal of software standardisation developed under the leadership of Susan Harker.  Our latest standards in this area address Web interface design ISO 9241-151:2008 and software accessibility ISO 9241-171:2008.  Our human centred design standard has been influential in the usability field and is currently being revised and incorporated into the 9241 series (ISO/DIS 9241-210). 

The conference which Tomas and Bengt started was Work with Display Units which was a success in 1986 (despite Chernobyl thoughtlessly exploding a few months before in nearby Ukraine).  This conference series continued with major international events in Montreal, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo, Berchesgarten and Kuala Lumpur before returning to Stockholm in 2007. The organisation continues today as a Technical Committee of the International Ergonomics Association IEA TC WWCS (Work With Computing Systems). 

In August 2009, the WWCS organisation will again collaborate with ISO TC 159 SC4 in a unique joint meeting at the IEA Congress in Beijing where the standards meeting will be held in public and provide a great opportunity for people to find out what goes on in standards making and find out how to become involved themselves.

Tom Stewart

Last updated: July, 2009

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