"User interface of any office equipment should be consistent regardless of its manufacturer, like automobiles and audio instruments." - Based on this common belief, four leading office equipment manufacturers, Canon Inc., Ricoh Company, Ltd., Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., and Seiko Epson Corporation are reaching beyond the boundaries of corporations and collaborating on the CRX Project. The CRX Project promotes consistencies of user interface designs by exploring user-friendliness from users' viewpoints. The project's name "CRX" stands for "Collaboration for Research and Exchange".

The launch of CRX dates back to 1995, when the three companies of Canon, Ricoh, and Fuji Xerox started collaborating on the user interface of copying machines. In 2000, Seiko Epson joined the project in approval of the intent of CRX, and the project has expanded the scope of target products to copying machines, multifunction machines, printers, and scanners.

In the early days of CRX, the main aims of the activities were to examine schemes for promoting consistencies of user interfaces based on the established designs and rules of individual companies, and put them together into "CRX Project User Interface Guidelines" for sharing the information.

Recently, the emphasis of CRX activities has been shifting to the creation of new values for user interface designs by cooperatively exploring and trying to realize the concepts for new challenges, such as universal design.

The CRX Project makes the achievements of activities open through academic societies, related industry associations, and this website to further expand the efforts for user-friendliness throughout the industry.