How to get the SUMI service
How to get the SUMI service
There are two varieties of SUMI.
Browse around these pages to get a feel for the concepts and procedures involved. But it's totally OK to ask me questions! There isn't an FAQ because questions are always individual.
Contact me, Jurek Kirakowski at jzk@uxp.ie, tell me about your project and ask me for a quotation. Bulk discounts are always possible (if you need many reports either all at once or at regular time intervals).
I'll need either a Purchase Order from your organisation, or a payment through PayPal or by electronic bank transfer. Once this is done, we're ready to go.
We agree between ourselves about how many reports you will need, when are the closing deadlines for each report (but be generous with time!), and in what language you require the SUMI questionnaire to be presented for each report (see the languages listed on the 'what is' page).
I'll send you a SUMI password for each report and you'll contact your respondents and ask them to log in to the SUMI page we have selected (for instance, sumi.uxp.ie/en) with the relevant SUMI password.
Your respondents will fill out the 50 SUMI questions plus a few additional questions. It usually takes someone about 3 minutes to do this. All the data is processed and stored on my secure server.
When you've got enough respondents, you contact me and I'll provide a standard SUMI report on your data. See the 400 example pages. I can also send updates on progress and advise when is a good time to halt data collection.
Contact me first, I usually reply within the working day.
As soon as I get an official purchase order from you, or payment through PayPal or bank transfer, I set you up on the SUMI server with a password, you are notified of this, and you're ready to go.
Generating a SUMI report is done within one working day. If you are working to a really tight deadline, arrange with me in advance. Reports have been known to arrive within an hour of completion of a survey.
SUMI is mainly used on-line, so your respondents will be invited to go to one of the pages at the sumi.uxp.ie site. The data is kept on a secure server at uxp.ie.
Some clients need to have SUMI in their intranet, and I've been able to do this successfully with them, while maintaining the same high standard as on the sumi.uxp.ie site.
You can also use a paper-and-ink version of SUMI in your desired language (you get it from me as a .pdf file). This must be by prior arrangement. You reproduce the questionnaire, collect data your own way, and send the data to me coded up as a text file. See formats.html. A standard SUMI report will be generated as above.
The SUMISCO software and standardisation data base is kept on my computers. These are never released, only the SUMI reports go to clients. The contact person with whom I have corresponded is the only person who receives a passworded, zipped SUMI professional report file. There are no exceptions to this procedure.
Because SUMI is a carefully-designed and validated questionnaire, the 50 questions should never be altered or tampered with. Otherwise, the standardisation data base becomes meaningless.
But you'll see some additional questions at the start and end of the block of the 50 standard SUMI questions. It's possible to customise these to specific requirements, for instance, if you have things you want to ask specifically about the software being evaluated. All the standard formats of User Interface in HTML are available, for instance:
Free text is always carefully sanitised by industrial-strength scanning algorithms. We can't guarantee total security against malware, however. Nobody can. But nothing damaging has been let through in the last 20 years.
If you are an academic, either an instructor at a recognised educational institution or a student doing research for a degree, you may apply for a student licence to use SUMI. Please apply before using! See academic.html for more details.