D4.3 Validated design for the AGRICORE interface
Creators: name: Ayesa Advanced Technologies
name: Idener AI
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

description: AGRICORE is a research project funded by the European Commission under the RUR-04-2018 call, part of the H2020 programme. AGRICORE proposes an innovative way to apply agent-based modelling to improve the capacity of policymakers to evaluate the impact of agricultural-related measurements under and outside the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The resulting AGRICORE tool will be tested in three use cases, each of them having a special focus on a specific type of impact assessment (IA): environmental IA, ecosystem services IA and socioeconomic IA. This document presents the design of the user interface (UI) of the future AGRICORE tool, as well as the process followed to obtain it. This design process includes the following phases: i) definition of requirements, ii) analysis of similar pre-existing tools for public policy impact assessment, iii) comparison and selection of tool(s) for the construction of the mockups that represent the design of each of the screens of the user interface, iv) design of the screens and construction of the mockups and v) validation of the design by the project partners and other external stakeholders. The last two phases have been executed in an iterative loop, so that inputs from subsequent userevaluation processes feedback into changes to the design, which are then re-evaluated by previous and new testers until a final design is reached. The initial idea was to implement this (re)design-(re)evaluation process through face-to-face workshops in which the tool could be presented to its future users, in order to obtain their feedback directly. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, this approach had to be delayed for a few months. Even so, the face-to-face evaluation approach could only be partially realised and had to be replaced by the implementation of online evaluation forms that were sent to potential users and external stakeholders, not always obtaining the desired number of responses.The first section of the document is the Introduction, which presents the modular architecture of the AGRICORE suite and the importance of the User Interface as a means to access the different tools of the suite independently. It also explains the need for the different modules to work together, as the result of actions executed from the UI, to produce the expected results by the user.Section 2 briefly reviews other tools previously developed in the EU framework for public policy impact assessment. EUROMOD and CAPRI were analysed as designs from which to draw inspiration.Section 3 describes the design approach for the GUI. First, the usability principles that have guided the whole process of user-centred design are presented. Then, an analysis of the commercially available tools for mockup design is presented, along with the reasons to finally chosing MarvelApp as the one to be utilised for the design of the AGRICORE UI visual appearance. Finally, the exhaustive list of Functional and Non-functional Requirements for the GUI are listed.Section 4, which is the core of this document, describes the proposed design by dividing it into as many subsections as there are elements in the tool. It also describes the possible operation flows that the user can follow through the interface. Beforehand, the main concepts of the GUI design (colour palette, table appearance, interacting files, etc.) are introduced.Section 5 describes the changes that were made to the design of the different screens and windows as a result of the different iterations of evaluation by future users, until the final validated design was reached.The final conclusions of the AGRICORE user interface design are summarised in Section 6.