Rules and Standards

CAA V5 Ergonomics Metrics Guide

How to measure compliance to ergonomics rules
Technical Article

How to Measure Compliance to Rules

Introduction
Measurement of ergonomics standards
   Rules measurement
Principles and rules
   Rules applicability
   Rules classification

Introduction

The purpose we have is twofold in providing this refresh of the ergonomics standards adapted to product lines applications:

One word of caution though, this set of guidelines do not cover and do not intend to cover the applicative concepts, how applications are divided and at which granularity. These topics may have heavy ergonomics impacts but cannot be covered by rules and standards. They have to be addressed through design based on user scenarios and ergonomics lab sessions.

The deliverables for these guidelines are available for the Extended Enterprise :

 

Measurement of ergonomics standards

Rules measurement

The following matrix is a template allowing measuring the standard compliancy of the different applications. It has to be instantiated and completed for each application:

CATIA-DELMIA Ergonomics Matrix

ENOVIA Ergonomics Matrix

We tried to make this matrix usable and straightforward without accessing the complete rule descriptions.

There is one line per rule and the columns have to be completed for each application:

We have only put in the matrix the important rules for the applications.

 

Principles and rules

Rules applicability

We are establishing principles and rules for all the lines of products of Dassault Systemes and they are all grouped together. You will see it when accessing them on the Ergonomics web site.

So, when do you have to follow a rule?

First, you have to know on which "platform" runs the application. Today an application can run on two platforms, the Wintop and the Webtop (the term Portal may also be used in this context).

A rule can be applicable on all platforms or on only certain platforms; this is defined through a marking just at the left of the rule title.

Win Web Rule XXX (this rule is applicable for all platforms)
  Web Rule YYY (this rule is applicable for the Webtop only)
Win   Rule ZZZ (this rule is applicable for the Wintop only)

The current correspondence (V5R4) between the products and the platforms is the following:

Line of products

Platform

Comments

CATIA

Wintop

 

ENOVIA

Webtop

DMU Navigator in the ENOVIA Portal Foundation is based on the Wintop platform

DENEB

Wintop

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rules classification

The rules are classified with the following structure:

  1. Interface components
  2. Interaction techniques
  3. Input basics
  4. Visual design

The rules we are publishing at Dassault Systemes are defined and prioritized to fit the needs of our lines of products. But they do not pretend to be complete, their purpose is to guide and measure our applications.

We have chosen this classification to be able to make reference easily to the Windows standards published by Microsoft. Even for the Webtop environment, most of these rules are applicable.

The current Windows reference book about user interface is "Microsoft Windows User Experience: Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers" published by Microsoft Press in 1999 (ISBN 0-7356-0566-1). It replaces the previous book called "The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design". However the changes are not that big so the previous book is still an excellent reference.

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History

Version: 1 [Jan 2000] Document created
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Copyright © 2000, Dassault Systèmes. All rights reserved.