Proposed Charter for OASIS DITA Adoption TC: Usability

oasis-charter-discuss message

Whereas poor usability is a serious impediment to adoption, and whereas in this draft charter usability is mentioned only as incidentally to the role of the dual-membership liaison person in section 2(a), I recommend that sections 1(b) and 1(c), the purpose and scope sections, explicitly include a mandate to research usability issues actively and report them to the DITA TC. It should be recognized that this represents a significant increase in the work expected of the proposed TC, involving intensive interactions with vendors and their DITA implementations. If such additional work is inappropriate or undesirable, then that work on usability should be delegated to some other body, perhaps a SC of the DITA TC, and the language of section 2(a) should be changed to say that the liaison person communicates to that body any usability issues that may be discovered in the course of the primary mission of the Adoption TC.

Personally, I believe the latter would be the better arrangement. The two functions are inherently disparate. Sales says "look at how good this is" and usability research asks "tell me in what ways this is bad."