The Declaration of System Usability

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to establish a new direction for product usability, it is imperative to state the foundation for the new approach.

For Network Integration Software, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that

• Communities of people are a fundamental structure of working.
• The innate diversity in communities and environments results in heterogeneous, distributed computing solutions.
• Change is a natural part of those communities and environments.
• Community productivity and cost of ownership are primary purchase criteria.
• Usability of software, both within and across components, is a critical market success factor.
• Usability depends on designing from a common set of system assumptions.
• A highly usable product set is easy for people to learn and remember, it is efficient and satisfying to use, and few errors occur. People fulfill their intentions in a way that feels integrated, graceful, enjoyable, and aesthetically pleasing.

We, therefore, the Usability Architecture Team and the System Architects, representing the Network Integration Software development organizations of Digital Equipment Corporation, do solemnly publish and declare that all future products we develop will treat usability as a critical system attribute and will strive to:

• Integrate people's tasks and intentions, not underlying technology.
• Preserve a person's unique identity, regardless of the location from which they enter the network, the technology they use, the communities to which they belong, and the tasks they perform. Allow people to perform any task called for by their role in their organization.
• Treat a group as a single entity, independent of its changing members, their locations, and the technologies they use. Enhance the effectiveness of these communities of people by making group membership automatically provide all the shared resources and capabilities of the group.
• Enable people to view, organize, use, and manage the rich distributed environment without having to know about its underlying technology or location.
• Make the distributed system robust in an ever-changing environment. Reveal changes in the distributed environment only when those changes are relevant to people's ability to achieve their desired goals.
• Build user interfaces that are consistent in appearance and behavior with people's expectations, industry standards, and other Network Integration Software products.

And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our work, our fortunes, and our honor.

Alan Abrahams John Adams Kim Buxton Danny Cobb Betsy Comstock Bill Duane Dennis Giokas Patti Meara Paul Messier Neil Murray Cathy Smith Marlene Steger Chris Strutt Colin Strutt Ben Thomas Anita Uhler Michelle Waugh Sarah Webber Phil Wells Kathrin Winkler