This Technical Report describes a potential family of International Standards, named the Common Industry Formats (CIF), that document the specification and evaluation of the usability of interactive systems. It provides a general overview of the CIF framework and contents, definitions, and the relationship of the framework elements. The intended users of the framework are identified, as well as the situations in which the framework may be applied. The assumptions and constraints of the framework are also enumerated.

The framework content includes the following:

• consistent terminology and classification of specification, evaluation and reporting;

• a definition of the type and scope of formats and the high-level structure to be used for documenting required information and the results of evaluation.

This Technical Report is applicable to software and hardware products used for predefined tasks. The information items are intended to be used as part of system-level documentation resulting from development processes such as those in ISO9241-210, and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7 process standards.

This Technical Report focuses on documenting those elements needed for design and development of usable systems, rather than prescribing a specific process. It is intended to be used in conjunction with existing International Standards, including ISO9241, ISO20282, ISO/IEC9126 and the SQuaRE series (ISO/IEC25000 to ISO/IEC25099).

This Technical Report does not prescribe any kind of method, life cycle or process.