GSBL: Giving Germany’s Most Comprehensive Chemical Substances Data Pool a Convincing Face

Abstract

This paper describes the concept of the user-oriented redesigning process of the Joint Substance Data Pool of the German Federal Government and Federal States (GSBL). The GSBL contains at all relevant information on 63.000 pure chemical substances, 320.000 mixtures of substances and 207.000 concerning legal regulations. Redesigning is necessary, because current and potential users are not satisfied with the usability of the retrieval application and the search result presentation. The substance search is partially so complex that trainings courses and detailed instruction manuals are inquired. In order to achieve a tailor-made solution for current and potential key users as well as for user that have or have not been used the GSBL’s retrieval application before, a promising redesigning process is introduced and established usability techniques are utilized.