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Revamp the Ramp-Up: Boosting DMPonline Admin Accessibility and Ease!
On 19th March 2024, we conducted a pivotal DMPonline user group session, focusing specifically on a user experience workshop. This 90-minute session was a platform for engaging discussions, where we delved into the various aspects of DMPonline's user interface and functionality. The feedback we received from you on three key features is invaluable and will significantly shape the future of DMPonline. In this blog post, I will elaborate on our discussions, the feedback, and our plans for incorporating your valuable insights.
The User Experience
The user experience has always been at the heart of DMPonline. We, the DMPonline team, are committed to ensuring that the tool is easy to use and user-friendly, so you do not need to think about the various features on the interface; instead, you need to follow the logic so it is intuitively easy to use. However, we cannot take the required step back on our own. We need our community, including administrators like you who create the templates, to step in and let us know what works well and what does not. Your feedback is crucial in shaping the future of DMPonline.
Although there are various aspects we could have investigated, this time, we have decided to focus mainly on features that are important for our paying clients – so the administrators who create the templates provide feedback and make sure that the tool works well for their organisation. Namely, although the discussion was not limited to, we investigated:
- User dashboard & plans page
- Creation and editing of plans
- Creation and editing of templates
Before delving into the groups of each group's feedback, I want to highlight the positive feedback we received. Your appreciation for specific features and your constructive suggestions have been duly noted. We are excited to share a summary of your feedback below.
1. User dashboard & plans page
The user dashboard and plans page show the plans. You can be either the owner, co-owner, or editor, and you can also see the users who created plans whose accounts are affiliated with your organisation. On the plans page, you will see the plans that requested feedback if this is a feature you enabled at your organisation.
Overall, you like this page, for example, features such as your sharing, and you like the current DMPonline as it is easy to review and add comments. However, there are a few areas you suggested we investigate. Some seem more straightforward to implement, such as changing the 'create plan' button from the bottom of the page to the top.
Another feature you would benefit from is a demonstration mode, which you could use when showing DMPonline to new researchers without sharing all the research plan titles available to the administrator's login. We suggest you use our test service, a dedicated environment where you can experiment with the tool's features without affecting your live data. This test environment can be beneficial when exploring new features or testing template changes. You can access this through https://uoe.dmptest.dcc.ac.uk/.
You would also be interested in seeing a column indicating which phase has been completed on any given DMP, as this currently needs to be clarified, and people do not necessarily linearly fill their DMPs. Although this will not currently be the highest priority, we raised an internal ticket for this and discussed adding a tick next to the phase name and a status indicator so you can see how much of a certain phase has been filled. The reason for this is that we are currently focusing on addressing issues that significantly impact the user experience. Still, we value your input and will consider this for future updates.
Also, you would like to be altered when something has changed in a plan since you last logged in, and for this, we thought we would introduce a visual indicator on the dashboard, which will remain consistent across the tool.
Last but not least, the suggestion was to add better management for the enquiry system – such as adding email notifications when new feedback for review has been received on the dashboard. Please note that this will be part of the significant re-design of feedback functionality in 2025, a comprehensive update that aims to streamline the feedback process and enhance your experience with DMPonline.
2. Creation and editing of plans
This is one of the areas we are looking into working on in 2024. We are aware there are loads of areas where we can improve, such as ensuring that the template the researcher is using is evident so there is clarity for the researcher about what template their DMP is based on. Major re-work is planned for this feature, which will involve a comprehensive review of the current system and implementing new features and improvements based on your feedback. We have spoken about this page several times, and we want to reassure you that we are committed to keeping you updated on the progress and the expected timeline for these changes.
The plan's request feedback is one of the areas suggested that needs clarification, and we will majorly re-design this feature to ensure that it is easy for the researchers to understand.
Another suggestion during this discussion was to add funders to the dropdown box rather than requiring users to type them into the box under the project details page.
Also, it would be helpful if we added a function for org administrators to copy updated locally created sections into the template, as this would save a lot of updating.
3. Creation and editing of templates
The third group looked into creating and editing funder templates, which you find pretty easy to use. At this stage, it is clear that when you make a template in DMPonline, this should be agreed on and considered before you put it into the system. So, talk to your colleagues about what sections you want to cover, what type of questions you want, and what kind of answers and guidance you will provide your researchers. Also, when you use conditional questions, you need to create a template with all questions by default, and the conditions can remove answers rather than add them. In practice, this means that, for example, if you ask a researcher a question about any human subject that will be involved in your research, and they answer no – you might want to remove sections on ethics potentially.
The primary feedback we will focus on from this group will be to ensure that when a funder template is updated, we will notify the administrators so you can ensure that the templates you are using are the most up-to-date ones.
Other than this, there were suggestions for minor bug fixes, such as ensuring that the admin menu and submenu do not disappear when the mouse moves or that the spell check in a Word document works.
Overall, we have enjoyed this user group and gathering all the feedback from you. Thank you to all who participated in the last user group; please note that the feedback has now been processed, and we will do our best to add the various requests to the upcoming sprints.
Celebrating Brilliance: Our DMPonline Community
Last but not least, pencil in our forthcoming community get-together - Celebrating Brilliance: Our DMPonline Community. We are looking forward to seeing you there.