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