89 Usability Analysis for CRIS: Some Examples and Practical Guidelines BENEDETTO LEPORI, DAVIDE BOLCHINI Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano Summary This paper presents a systematic approach to analyze the usability of CRIS. Usabi- lity is intended as the property of an information system to effectively support the users in accomplishing their goals within the overall institutional mission of the system itself. A step-by-step method called MiLE (Milano-Lugano Evaluation) is introduced to guide information providers, system designers and administrators to assess the usability of their system. The method is based on established approach- es to usability analysis, and uses the notions of user profile, scenario, goal, task, and usability attribute. The relevance and potential application of usability analy- sis to existing CRIS are discussed. Finally, to show examples of the benefits of the approach, we performed MiLE usability analysis to the CORDIS web site. 1 Introduction In this paper, we examine how usability methods could contribute to improve the interaction between CRIS and their users. In the last year, the issue of answering user needs has become a central one for the development of CRIS for two main reasons: • Firstly, CRIS have moved from specialized project databases to more generic information systems, containing different types of information on research acti- vities like information on institutions, people’s competences, scientific publica- tions, etc. This development, as well as the easier access to information due to the WWW, means that there are different possible target public of CRIS whose needs in terms of information contents and formats are quite different: among the most cited publics, there are the researchers themselves, policymakers, jour- nalists, research administrators (Koopmans 2002). This implies that information contents, as well as access structures, should be targeted to specific publics, meaning of course a greater complexity of the information system; • Secondly, thanks to Internet, the volume and the accessibility of research in- formation has grown enormously; most of the information is also available on the web pages of people, projects and institutions. Users are becoming more