Usability Charter

This is currently a working draft.

= Name = Usability of Identity Systems Working Group

= Purpose = This Working Group seeks to identify issues that hinder the sublime usability of identity systems in use and as they are being developed. Further, we seek to develop a set of "Usability Best Practices" that range from the technical (e.g., APIs and RESTful interfaces) to the user experience (which is where we expect most of our work to be focused).

We allow a broad definition of "identity system" to incorporate current best practices of e.g. PKI, SAML, LDAP, etc. to emergin systems such as Information Cards, OpenID and XRI. Our goal is to provide users with an interface that is at once comfortable and secure, familiar and precise.

= Principles = This working group will abide by the Identity Commons PurposeAndPrinciples. No more specific principles are planned at this time.

= Requirements of Participation and How to Join = There are no restrictions on participation. To join, add yourself to the list of participants below and subscribe to the community@idcommons.net list. A dedicated mailing list may be formed if needed.

= Licenses and/or Restrictions on Usage of Work Product = Any work produced by this group must fall under either an OSI-certified OpenSource license, a Creative Commons license, or a trademark to be owned by Identity Commons.

= Current Deliverables and Milestones = The key deliverables are:
 * A place (on the wiki or perhaps the new Drupal site) to capture usability notes including the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
 * Each should include:
 * information describing how to reproduce the (positive or negative) experience
 * the date and reporter
 * the versions of software being reported on (highly useful if possible)
 * Further, there should be a way to search for entries and comment on them (as on a blog)
 * Issues should be able to be marked "Open" or "Closed"


 * A white paper explaining the key concepts of identity system usability


 * A live document describing the best practices of identity system design for usability

= Current Meeting Schedule = No regular meetings are planned at this time -- work will proceed via email, the current wiki, and telecons scheduled as needed.

= Current Membership = Please add yourself below: * Fen Labalme * Tim Freeman * Dennis E. Hamilton * Richard M. Conlan

= Current Stewards Council Representative and Alternate = * Fen Labalme

= Current Links =
 * Usability WG Repository - a (perhaps temporary) repository for capturing Usability Experiences

= History =
 * 2008 Q1 Report Usability