Proposed Charter for OASIS DITA Adoption TC: Usability

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."

 

    /Bruce 
Nevin