Development and Usability Testing of a Web-Based Research Guide for Health Solutions Grant Writing.

Abstract

Young scientists, including postdocs and assistant professors, need access to grant writing resources for training and proposal development. To assist in this, we developed a web-based research guide providing centralized access to curated tools throughout the research funding process- finding funding, preparing proposals, managing awards, etc. Using consumer informatics principles, we enhanced the research grant repository's effectiveness, with lessons learned and insights generalizable to other institutions. Six faculty members completed nine tasks to explore the guide's ten sections. Participants found the guide highly usable, with an excellent System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 89.2. Suggestions included improving navigation, content organization and providing education on award management processes. Liked features were the chronological organization of information, samples from successful grants, pre-populated templates, and mechanisms for ongoing feedback. These findings underscore the importance of usability in developing resources that effectively support faculty in grant writing and proposal development.