Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure for the 21st Century: Usability Analysis of the Collaborative Working Environment

Ease-of-use is of paramount importance to ensure the acceptability of a virtual platform. With that in mind, we sought to evaluate the usability of Microbial Resource Research Infrastructure (MIRRI)’s CollaborativeWorking Environment (CWE). Usability tests intend to determine whether an interface facilitates a user’s ability to complete tasks in the platform analyzed. For the MIRRI’s CWE user tests, 29 participants, aged between 25 and 65 years old, from 10 countries (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Spain), with different professional backgrounds (i.e. Research/ Education, industry, Officers, among others) were invited to carry out activities within 3 modules of the platform, namely: (1) Microbial Resources Catalog (MRC), (2) Services and Workflows Catalog (SWC) and the (3) Transnational Access information and application submission (TNA). At the end of the experience, participants were asked to fill out the System Usability Scale (SUS) - a standardized questionnaire widely used to measure usability. Based on the SUS analysis, participants had a good perception of the usability of the MIRRI platform. MIRRI’s CWE platform innovates in the unification of data and information from the microbiological universe. The usability analysis validates the user experience, thus ensuring that acceptance by the users is not hindered by poor ease-of-use.