Usability Testing
Case Studies
CASE STUDY: Home Office - National Strategy for Police
Information Systems (NSPIS)
The National Strategy for Police Information
Systems (NSPIS) acknowledges that there are opportunities for
increasing police effectiveness by integration of IT systems both
within and between Police Forces.
A premise of NSPIS is that customisation of systems by or for
Police Forces should be discouraged.
This strategy necessitates that agreement to a single
specification is obtained and that users accept ownership of the
common systems. This will
not be achieved easily but the benefits, as eluded to above, are
expected to be substantial.
As part of this process of providing a single
specification, NSPIS identified the need for standards in the area of
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI).
These standards are intended to cover not just the choice of
GUI delivery platform but also standards for the design of user
interfaces.
In 1995/96 Corporate Solutions was commissioned
to prepare the standards for the design of user interfaces. These were to include guidance for developers, suppliers and
the end-user population of Police staff and civilians employed by the
Police service. Therefore
the standards were required to cover all issues of GUI development
including integration with system development methods, control
procedures and testing.
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As a necessary aspect of preparing the
documentation the existing standards adopted by a myriad of
suppliers were reviewed. The
best aspects of these standards were retained in the definitive
NSPIS GUI standards.
These standards were published in 1996. |
In order to encourage active use of the standards they were provided
as a suite of documents:
·
NSPIS: Windows 95 Style Guide;
·
Quick Reference Style Guide;
·
Computer Based Training Package;
·
Integration with SSADM;
·
User Interface Design Documentation;
·
Conformancy Checklists;
·
Change Control Procedures.
“For the
“Greater Good of All” it is required that developments performed
under the NSPIS programme are all conformant with these standards.
This means that all suppliers to the NSPIS programme and the
Police Forces of England and Wales enforce these standards.” (NSPIS:
Windows 95 Style Guide, 1996, Police IT Organisation.)
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