User Feedback - CTS Prototype 7/31/97

Preliminary Analysis of CTS

After a very limited exposure to the Committee Tracking System (CTS), the possibilities for its use are enticing. The stated primary function of CTS is to establish a framework for centralizing information about committees, including membership, meetings, and purposes. While the set up time is considerable (as an inexperienced user, it took me 40 minutes to completely set up a three person committee), the end result could actually be a very useful tool to committee members and organizers.

Without question, the speed with which the members database is accessed is far too slow at this point to allow any practical use of the CTS. For the purposes of my comments, it is assumed that before anything else, the this time delay would have to be reduced significantly.

In general, I could imagine several different uses for the CTS by several different people. If the system was large enough, it could serve as a guidepost to individual connections, making it easy to tell who belonged to which committees. This information could be useful when it came to selecting members for new committees, whether it be to include someone with specific connections (as in, this new committee needs someone who is on ACAC and TAC), or other considerations (this committee needs someone who isn’t on other committees, or who has an office in Holmes Hall, etc.) Each Committee may want to have someone on it who would update information on meeting times, attendance records, and goal accomplishments, so that others or absent members may have easy access to that information. Also, coordination of individual committees can be made easy with the reporting function, particularly the label and scheduling functions.

There are several recommendations that would apply to the overall System.

• I think that it would be very useful to have a one-click button enabling the user to move directly from one view to another. While we have this one click ability on the main committee view, it’s not on the others.
• Input fields should be the same throughout the System. As an example, sometimes the date fields require two digits for the year, and other times, such as under the committee view, four digits are required.
• When adding anything new, be it committee, meeting, etc., the user should not be allowed to enter data before clicking the "+" key. I was able to input most of a meeting information, and then having it not take because I hadn’t actually started the record!
• Throughout the system, I think that the bottom description line, which typically tells the user which field the cursor is in, could be used to give instructions as to the format or style in which information should be inputted.

I think this section of CTS is ultimately the most useful, providing all the key data about any given committee. This is the area most people would use to find the information they are seeking. As a side note to overall speed and performance, the "build up" of this screen seems to be greatly reduced by the time it takes to assemble the membership list. Perhaps the list could be viewed optionally.

Additionally, it would be very helpful to be able to tell who the chairperson of the committee is from this view, as they would probably be the contact person for the committee.

The meeting view serves two very useful functions. First, it could be used as a good reference point as an accurate and updated posting of future meeting times (again, assuming a delegated person keeps CTS current). Secondly, it serves as a good record of past meetings, and who attended them.

Functionally, the largest criticism I had of this view was the difficulty in inputting the date and time of meetings, once having selected a new meeting. The need to enter a "space" first is cumbersome, as is the need to enter 4 digits for time, i.e. inputting "01:30" for 1:30. Also, if it is possible, it would be helpful to have a pull down for am and PM. The display of seconds for time is also useless, and confusing.

It would be very optimistic to expect committees to make use of this function, particularly as it stands now. I would suggest considering a different use for this view, tailoring it more towards "actions" or "action steps", instead of tasks. For instance, on a large committee, several members might have the duties of actually writing the final report. Set up as action steps, it could be tied into deadlines, as opposed to task end dates. Again, this would set CTS as a accessible resource for committee members to relate to and touch base with the actions of the committee.

To make this section easier to use, the "committee members assigned" should only access those persons already selected as on the committee. Also, it would be nice to have the ability to one click all committee members for a given task.

Some thoughts on the person view:

• The full address section, which I assumed would be used to input individuals home addresses, would probably not be needed, as the on campus address is already there.
• The scheduling section, which is uncharacteristically difficult to access, should have much greater prominence. Scheduling preferences, or even notes about contact information, or vacation information, should be readily accessible to the CTS user.
• Along these lines, if the scheduling section can’t be more visually accessible, then the flag of "check schedule notes" should be automated to warn the user of additional information.

Other than denoting the chairperson for a committee, this section seems to be nearly useless. If necessary, possibly this section could be combined with the person view.

The report generate section of CTS would probably be the most invaluable tool. The ability to easily access an accurate list of committee members, and their contact information, would be advantageous on a daily basis.

While the scheduling information and membership list reports are fine as they stand, there is some issues with the labels. These include:

• the need to chose the type of label to be used;
• the ability to chose which mailing information goes onto the label, (particularly because the information in the database is often truncated); and
• labels should probably print with the first name first, as opposed to last name first.

In summation, the CTS could ultimately prove very useful, but there are some design issues at this stage. The end user is vital, as there needs to be an incentive to work with a somewhat unwieldy system. To this end, the reporting and committee cross-over aspects need to be played up.

The most important aspect of the system is to make committee information easily available, and as such, each committee that is put into the system makes it that much more useful. Even with levels of security on the system, it would need to be available for viewing by anyone.