CIS-Net tools have significantly grown over the past ten years. Most new versions of ‘CIS-Net powered by FastTrack’ come with new functionalities and every new functionality can have a tremendous impact on the screen lay-out due to its current limitations. As part of ‘Shareholder Value Initiatives,’ which came out of a FastTrack Management Board brainstorming session (November 2009), the question of CIS-Net usability and ergonomics was broached. This issue, initially raised during a study on ergonomics conducted by external consultants in 2004, was again raised in the CIS-Net Management Committee meeting in Istanbul in October 2010). FastTrack and CISAC then formed a Usability taskforce to create a questionnaire targeted for CIS-Net users.
When analyzing the usability of CIS-Net, the following factors were taken into account: ease of use, usefulness, ease of learning and overall satisfaction. The survey will focus on lay-out/design, functionality and training/support. It will also be used to solicit feedback that may lead to needed improvements. Due to the length of the survey and the wide societal distribution, it was decided to utilize on-line survey technology and also to make the survey available in all three CISAC official languages (English, French and Spanish).
The online survey, coordinated by FastTrack Management and CISAC Secretariat, will be conducted by providing each society’s CIS-Net Business Liaison with a link, by the end of March 2011, to their society user on-line survey to distribute to a variety of their users that fall into the following categories: experienced, occasional and new users. Business liaisons with be given the ability to track their user’s response rate and will receive an automatically generated Excel spreadsheet report with consolidated responses. The business liaisons will then enter their consolidated society’s response via society business liaison on-line survey by mid-April. A report on the results of the Usability taskforce analysis, and the resulting recommendations, will be presented to the CIS-Net Liaisons, CIS-Net Management Committee, the FastTrack Management Board and the CISAC Supervisory Board (CSB) by the end of May 2011.
Alice Meisel
Director, International Business Operations
BMI
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