Contextual research brings user-centred design to Arthritis Research Campaign
March 2009

We've just completed a two-part user experience project for arc (Arthritis Research Campaign), a major funder of research into arthritis and related musculoskeletal diseases.

We were invited to contribute to a project to develop their new online grants administration system. The existing manual and paper based system was labour intensive and arc hoped to streamline this, making substantial savings in staff time and effort. Our brief was to identify the requirements of external users of the proposed system and to feed these into the development of their new online grants administration system. In the first part of the project, which took place last summer, we interviewed medical researchers and administrators from a number of major British universities. Observing the practices of specialists as they prepared complex, scientific grant applications enabled us to identify which aspects of the user interface were most important in supporting them in their submission. Making the task simpler for them reduces the number of enquiries received by the arc administrative team.

These findings fed into a requirements report presented to arc. Taking our findings into account, the organisation went on to develop an efficient new web-enabled grants administration system.

For the second part of the project, we carried out user testing of this system, with a selection of the same applicants and reviewers. A report of recommendations followed to help make the system yet more effective and usable for both arc and those seeking research grants.

Beverley Chapman, Research Team Leader at arc, said, 'Cogapp have been extremely helpful and informative in the planning process and during the implementation of our on-line application system. They dealt with the stakeholders in a sympathetic manner, and fed back to us in clear terms the matters that we needed to take into account. As a result the ongoing implementation of the system has gone far smoother than we anticipated.'