Coaching Success

by Davide Bolchini and Lorenzo Cantoni, USI, January 2003

ASH - Access to Scientific Space Heritage

The ASH project greatly benefited from VNET5 coaching by learning and adapting user testing techniques to the specific needs and constraints of their project. USI provided ASH with competencies and elements for deciding how, when and by means of which tools an effective user test had to be planned for validating the usability of their Virtual Control Room and annexed applications. The contribute of VNET5 was held as crucial and very important by the project for planning an adequate user validation and carry out effectively a usability evaluation.

The success measures for VNET5 coaching to ASH were:

• improved quality of the final application
• user involvement and enhanced user satisfaction
• raising of awareness of the relevance of user validation among the development team.

OPENDRAMA - The Digital Heritage of Opera in the Open Network Environment

The OPENDRAMA project (www.opendrama.com) gained significant advantages by exploiting the coaching provided by VNET5 through USI. Within the project, a user validation plan comprising usability procedures for carrying out usability inspections and usability tests on the prototype application has been defined with the VNET5 coaching support. Moreover, after the coaching of VNET5, OPENDRAMA set up a successful peer review of their deliverables (intended as validation of the project mission and user requirements), thus implementing user validation very early in development.