AFSCUS Software Description

Recommendation: This product has great potential in the Aquaculture field. This reviewer recommends the product, with revisions for aeration computations, and manual improvements as a general tool for hatchery management. The potential does exists that by using this tool significant savings in calculations could be realized through the use of this system.

Category	Score	Comment
Operating Systems Environment	3	Easy to install and operate
User Interface	3	Initially somewhat hard to follow; could use an expert screen designer to help improve the interface. Once learned, easy to follow.
User Manual	4	The user manual needs to be more user friendly and easier to read and apply to applications in the field.
Help Facility	3
Examples	4	Add a chapter with a case study to the User Manual
Learning Curve	2	Easy to follow
Ease of Usage	2
Usefulness to Fisheries Science	1	A tool that will help hatchery management

1 = Excellent, 2 = Very Good, 3 = Good, 4 = Poor, 5 = Not Applicable

Review Environment: IBM PS2/Model 80, 80486 processor, 500mb disk, 16MB RAM, running DOS V5.0 and Windows 3.1. Application tested and installed under this configuration.

General Comments: AQUAFIC V1.10 was easy to install and generated no GPF’s when executing. The product is not very intuitive and requires some basic understanding of what an individual user want’s to accomplish. This reviewer is a Ph.D. student is fisheries science with a project for Striped Bass aquaculture and found the product both useful and easy to use, after getting over the learning curve. The manual could use significant improvement and would benefit from extensive use of screen pictures for each of the options. The manual also requires publishing the formulas for computations. More importantly a case study example as the first chapter, after the installation chapter, would be very useful and much more beneficial. The most useful part of the tool is the Smart Conversion tool. This was very useful for the reviewer to provide conversions for technicians and other non-scientific personnel. The weakest part of the system is the Aerator Evaluation section, and in fact this reviewer found the estimation of actual aeration efficiency to be incorrect. It is noted in the manual (P27) that these computations are from the public domain and an appropriate warning is issued.

Suggestions for Improvement: Rewrite the manual to be more user friendly and include screen picture to help explain the usage. In the manual publish the formulas used for computations or at least reference the appropriate literature from which the computations were derived. Add a case study to improve the readability and usage. The screen forms are somewhat hard to follow and could probably benefit from an expert in design interfaces.

Additional Information Visit NID technologies web site for additional information about AQUAFIC and other software they have developed.