I've got a bias against design standards based on my experiences working with organizations that have tried to set them before, rather than after designing a product. Standards should be a way to document a proven approach, not a prescription for how to do something that hasn't been done yet. On the other hand, process standards are useful a priori because they provide guidance on how to do something that you may have not done before. And like design standards, process standards should be updated over time with experience.
With all that said, I am encouraged to see that the International Standards Organization (ISO) has published a set of standards and related process guidelines on "ease of operation for everyday products". This refers primarily to consumer products. Userfocus provides a useful, high-level explanation of the four part ISO standards:
"Part 1, 'Design requirements for context of use and user characteristics', provides a set of sensible design guidance for anyone who is developing consumer technology. It outlines a five-step process that the design team should follow...The remaining three parts of ISO 20282 (parts 2-4) propose test methods for measuring the usability of every day products. The three test methods are essentially the same and will be familiar to anyone who has observed a usability test."
In other words, the standards don't provide significant educational value to experienced usability practitioners, but may be useful for those getting started, or even those with some experience who are looking for guidelines on best practices. Note that you can purchase the documents from the ISO site, but each of the four is over $100 US.
The Userfocus article also stresses an important point about product usability testing - you need large samples to get reliable data in a variable population, but:
"remember that for most consumer products there is only one key goal: 'the most frequent and/or important user goal that the product is intended to support' as it says in the standard. This means that each participant will be asked to carry out just one or two tasks with the product, so the participant session time should be much shorter than with 'thinking aloud' testing. My estimate is that each participant could be briefed, tested and sent on his or her way in 20 minutes."
