Clause 6.2: Transparency
Transparency in use is about whether the people affected and the people operating the system get information they can act on: what the system is for, where it should not be used, what its limits are and how its outputs should be read.
What clause 6.2 is
Transparency in use is about whether the people affected and the people operating the system get information they can act on: what the system is for, where it should not be used, what its limits are and how its outputs should be read. It is the use-side counterpart of product transparency, and it is what makes informed acceptance possible.
What the 2023 edition said
The first edition placed transparency in quality in use as a sub-characteristic of satisfaction, alongside the product-side transparency.
What the second edition changes
The clause is kept and placed under the relabelled risk mitigation characteristic. No change of substance is recorded in the public draft.
The FDIS text is not public. The change line above is read from the public draft, which is not the FDIS and may differ. No clause level diff is invented here. The ISO stage record is the authority for the dates.
Why it matters to the buyer
A system can be transparent on paper and opaque in use. This clause asks whether the person receiving an output knows what it means, what it does not mean, and where to go when it looks wrong.
What to write in the requirement
Write the user-facing notice in plain language, next to the output. State the intended use, the limits and the route to question a result. Test the notice with real users and record what they understood.
Evidence a reviewer asks for
A reviewer will read the notice as a user and ask what they would do differently. A notice written for lawyers fails this test.
- User noticeThe plain-language notice shown with the output, covering intended use, limits and how to read it
- Comprehension testA record of real users reading the notice and what they understood
- Query routeThe route to question or contest an output, with the response time
Where it commonly fails
- The notice is buried in terms
- There is no route to question an output
- The limits are not stated where the output appears
What to do before publication
Test the notice with five real users and record the result.
Read across
Source for clause 6.2: ISO/IEC 25059, Clause 6.2, retrieved 20 October 2026. The change line rests on the public draft of the second edition and ISO page 88234. The requirement, evidence and gaps are written from our record. Every source.