Mastering ERP Interface Complexity

A Scalable User Interface Concept for ERP Systems

Christian Lambeck and Rainer Groh

Institute of Software and Multimedia Engineering, Chair of Media Design,

Technische Universiät Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany

Keywords: Usability, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, User Interface Design, User Guidance, Information Access.

Abstract: In recent literature, numerous research efforts addressed the usability of enterprise resource planning (ERP)

systems. Although several heuristics, surveys and interviews provided valuable results to understand and

improve the user satisfaction of ERP, explicit research on the user interface design has been rarely

discussed. As ERP systems have a high dissemination in many enterprise areas, usability issues located in

the user interface have a significant impact on millions of users. This paper gives an overview of the related

work in the fields of usability studies, complexity reduction strategies and visual information presentation in

ERP systems. The conclusion reveals a niche currently not considered in research. Therefore, an abstract

interface model is introduced that aims to establish a new understanding of accessing ERP systems. The

scalable user interface concept attempts to reduce the problem of user guidance and overall system

complexity to ease the user’s system access.

1 INTRODUCTION

Latest research in the field of enterprise resource

planning (ERP) has primarily focused on

technologies and concepts to keep up with a steadily

increasing complexity of business processes and the

volatile market needs. Examples of these

technological improvements are performance

optimizations basing on in-memory and multi-core

computing (Tertilt and Krcmar, 2011), service-

oriented architectures (Seth et al., 2011) or cloud-

based business applications (Ragusa and Puliafito,

2011). In contrast to this technology-focused

research and development, innovation concerning

human-computer interaction in ERP is available, but

obviously less considered. Whereas numerous

research papers in the field of user satisfaction and

usability have focused on the participation of users

in the implementation process, top management

support, self-efficacy or perceived usefulness of the

system (Bin et al., 2010); (Mitakos et al., 2011), the

dedicated investigation of usability barriers located

in the graphical user interface (UI) is rarely

discussed.

This paper addresses an elementary niche in

human-computer interaction in ERP systems. The

authors argue that traditional user interface concepts,

which can be found in most state-of-the-art ERP

systems today, cannot keep up with the rising

requirements. Besides the evolution of business

processes such as real-time supply chains and the

related technologies described before, also the user’s

expectation of visualization and interaction concepts

will significantly change. Nowadays, most users are

already familiar with mobile, multi-touch and

visually rich interfaces that they often use in their

sparse time (e.g. entertainment systems in cars,

smartphones and tablet-PCs, interactive displays in

museums and exhibitions, gesture control in games

etc.). In contrast, the majority of current ERP

systems is still dealing with user interfaces that were

established in the middle of the 1990’s and utilize

forms, tables, standard diagrams and mouse and

keyboard interaction. (cp. (SAP AG, 2012)) Due to

this essential gap between the high requirements and

user expectations on the one hand, and the restricted

UI capabilities on the other hand, users are rather

forced to focus on usability problems than on

fulfilling their actual tasks. (Singh and Wesson,

2009) In consideration of future trends in ERP UI

design, the focus will be laid on web technologies,

social media integration, interactivity and the

differentiation between devices (stationary and

mobile) and user profiles (casual, professional).

170

Lambeck C. and Groh R..

Mastering ERP Interface Complexity - A Scalable User Interface Concept for ERP Systems.

DOI: 10.5220/0004566601700178

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 170-178

ISBN: 978-989-8565-61-7

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

(Falk, 2012) Therefore, the web-enabled service

orientation will proceed and offers several

potentials. The following section presents related

work in the field of user interface design in ERP

systems and highlights the achievements made so

far. It examines the evolved understanding of the

term user satisfaction within the last years, strategies

to cope with ERP complexity and takes a look at the

role of visual information presentation in ERP.

Herein, also usability related user studies are

addressed. The following section 3 presents our

motivation for a paradigm change in the UI design

of ERP systems. The concluding section 4

introduces an abstract interface model for ERP

systems and thereby incorporates the prior findings.

Section 5 summarizes this paper and gives a brief

view on our future work.

2 RELATED WORK

This section on related work presents research

literature from three relevant fields. The first part is

devoted to related studies on user satisfaction and

usability in the field of ERP. This section presents

chosen definitions of the term user satisfaction and

highlights the insufficient consideration of the

graphical user interface. Furthermore, it describes

prior results from a usability study on manufacturing

enterprises, which was conducted by the authors in

2011. In the second part, strategies to reduce ERP

complexity, such as adaptive UIs and user guidance,

are addressed. These concepts intend assisting the

user in accomplishing his or her current task by

utilizing several supporting strategies. The third part

gives a brief summary of visual information

presentation in the field of ERP, which “seeks to

provide people with better and more effective ways

to understand and analyse these large data sets,

while also enabling them to act upon their findings

immediately”. (Keim et al. (eds.), 2010)

The abstract interface model, which is described

in section 4, comprises the presented concepts of

user guidance and advanced visualizations to

decrease existing usability problems.

2.1 Usability and User Satisfaction

In recent literature, user satisfaction is often referred

to as one of the main user-centered critical success

factors of an ERP system. However, its definition is

manifold. Especially the aspects influencing user

satisfaction vary widely from organizational to

human aspects. In this section, several occurrences

of the term and their meanings are discussed to

illustrate the little consideration of the graphical user

interface.

The term user satisfaction can be often found in

ERP market surveys. This type of survey

benchmarks available (and mostly commercial)

products to support the selection of an ERP system

according to several criteria. Whereas

“...Functionality is still the most important selection

criterion...” for an ERP system (Intelligent systems

solutions GmbH, 2011), user-centered factors are

getting parenthetically summarized to the aspect of

ergonomics. The ergonomical criterion is ranked

fifth in the list of selection criteria, whereas it is not

even mentioned in the list of reasons for

implementing a new ERP installation. In contrast,

further objectives pursued with an ERP

implementation project, such as faster access to

enterprise information, indicate the implicit

necessity of user interface concerns besides the well

discussed performance issues.

An organizational perspective on the term user

satisfaction can be found when it comes to the

implementation and usage of an ERP system. Next

to user-centered factors, such as self-efficacy,

experience and perceived usefulness (Mitakos et al.,

2011), additionally the corporate culture, top

management support (Bin et al., 2010), position in

organizational hierarchy and user participation in

the implementation process (Zviran et al., 2005) are

just as well considered to influence user satisfaction.

User interface aspects are not explicitly declared as a

factor that has impact on user satisfaction.

During the system usage, also UI related

considerations on cognitive and dialog factors

emerge. Next to the aspects stated above, the term is

now enriched by navigation, user guidance, visual

factors, minimal memory load and learnability

(Calisir and Calisir, 2004); (Ozen and Basoglu,

2006). Several years ago, (Topi et al., 2005)

interviewed ERP users to identify critical

deficiencies in their system usage. Major difficulties

existed in the identification of and the access to the

right functionality, support in transaction execution,

system output limitations, terminology and finally

the overall system complexity. Although the results

originate from an interview with only ten

participants, the results indicated concrete user

interface deficiencies.

With the aim of identifying heuristics for ERP

usability, (Singh and Wesson, 2009) classified many

of the common usability criteria found in current

research literature. Five major heuristics resulted,

comprising navigation, learnability, task support,

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presentation (input and output) and customization.

Examples for potential usability issues assigned to

the heuristic of navigation are “Information is not

easy to find” and “There is no form of guidance

within the system to aid the user when completing a

business process.” Examples for potential usability

issues assigned to the heuristic of presentation are

“Visual layout is too complex.”, “Output is not easy

to understand and interpret.” and “The UI of the

system is not very intuitive.” (Singh and Wesson,

2009)

In a preliminary and regional survey with 58

participants, we investigated ERP systems

concerning the graphical user interface. The study

was focused on small and medium sized enterprises

(SME) in the manufacturing domain in an eastern

part of Germany and was conducted in 2011.

Whereas 70.0% of the interviewed participants

attested a high functional satisfaction of their ERP

system, significant potentials for improvements

existed with respect to adequate information

presentation. The available interfaces often do not

meet the user’s current needs for task-oriented views

and an appropriate level of detail. Depending on the

ERP system and business branch, various interface

elements are available. Due to its versatility, the

table is the most prevalent type to present

information (90.9%), whereas form-like layouts

were also found very frequently (81.8%). In

contrast, topological and time-based visualizations

such as floor plans and process views in terms of

network diagrams as well as three-dimensional

views have been significantly less mentioned. To

gain a further insight into concrete UI requirements,

the participants were given the choices described in

table 1 below.

The survey revealed that a major problem can be

seen in the task-oriented visualizations (75.0%). In

comparison with the little availability of alternative

visualizations in current ERP applications, this

might be one of the reasons for the high

responsiveness. The fixed presentation type of

enterprise data seems to be insufficient to fulfill the

user’s need of changing the visualization type when

necessary. Similar results have been observed for the

paradigm of detail and overview (59.4%). Current

ERP systems seem to support this aspect

inappropriately, as they offer a fixed and quite

detailed view on the enterprise data (e.g. in a table or

form). These two usability problems of inappropriate

visualization and level of detail have a significant

impact on the graphical user interface. Furthermore,

these problems directly affect accessing the

enterprise information and therefore need special

attention in future research. The remaining aspects

of faceted browsing & semantic search (34.4%), 3D-

views on processes and facilities (25.0%) and

especially multi-touch devices (9.4%) received

significantly less acceptance.

2.2 Reducing ERP Complexity

In current research, three main strategies for coping

ERP complexity exist. The first approach is based on

user guidance during a transaction by utilizing

concepts such as recommending the next steps, auto-

completion of input fields, highlighting mandatory

content or displaying help instructions for error

prevention and treatment. As the complexity remains

constant in this case, the user is less confused and

more confident because of the assistance in

questions of interaction. In most cases, the assistance

is implemented as an additional window or interface

region on top of the underlying standard ERP

system. A second strategy to cope with the

complexity of ERP interfaces is the simplification of

Table 1: A brief description of the choices, which have been supposed to improve the UI and its usage.

Tas

-oriented Visualizations

The system offers several visualization types of a process or system state. Examples

are listings (table), network diagrams and floor plans.

etail and Overview

It is possible to adjust the level of detail from a fine-grained view to an aggregated

overview and vice versa.

aceted Browsing & Semantic

Input of letters or words results in a listing of semantic or textual equivalent items

found in the system. The concept of faceted browsing allows for refining the results

(by category, date, department, priority...)

3D-Views on Processes

and Facilities

Current and upcoming system states and processes are illustrated with the help of

3D-visualizations. Examples for such process information are fill levels, durations,

downtimes and alert situations.

ulti-touch Devices

System interaction is supported by touch-sensitive and sensor-equipped devices. The

interaction supports multiple inputs.

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the displayed content itself. This strategy reduces the

UI functionality according to the user role or other

context information. In this case, the guidance is not

explicitly focused but the complexity is reduced to

an amount that the user is able to understand. The

third strategy is based on similarity and utilizes well

known patterns that the user knows from different

standard applications or other domains.

Although these strategies are very powerful in

reducing ERP interface complexity, they can only

make a contribution to minimize the user’s time

spent on learning how to transfer his or her domain

and process knowledge to the ERP system. As most

of the training time is caused by exactly this

mapping from domain knowledge to transaction

identification and execution, the reduction of ERP

interface complexity is an essential precondition for

intuitive ERP systems.

2.2.1 User Guidance

A first example of user guidance is the adaptive

navigation support (ANS) introduced by

(Supulniece, 2012). The proposed ANS meta-model

complements existing models for the development

of user adaptive enterprise applications (UAEA).

Therefore, it comprises several sub-models to

describe the end-user, his or her goals and

expectations, the changing object (trigger of

adaptation), the adapted object itself +and the

adaptation algorithm. The supporting capabilities

address a broad scope which covers process

execution overview, navigation, information,

problem prevention and error handling. The ANS

recommendation system resides next to the standard

functionality in the UI of an ERP and offers links to

recommended next steps, mandatory activities or

already executed forms.

A second example of user guidance is the

history-based playback mechanism from (Babaian

and Lucas, 2012). Assuming that available help

mechanisms in ERP systems are too generic for

concrete user questions regarding enterprise-specific

interaction issues, a log-based playback mechanism

is proposed. The prototype replays interaction

sequences in real-time according to previously

generated usage log data. This approach results in a

more flexible and low-cost alternative to pre-

recorded and generic tutorials or other types of

support.

2.2.2 Content Simplification

Decreasing the complexity by reducing the content

of a system’s interface, such as masking irrelevant

form fields or offering limited functionality

according to context information, is a second major

strategy to handle ERP complexity. In their research

on ephemeral adaptation for ERP menus, (Findlater

et al., 2009) follow the approach of content

reduction by gradually fading-in menu items, which

are predicted to be less important. In contrast, most

important entries are presented right from the

beginning. By gradually revealing the variety of

available items, the user is enabled to easily identify

the high priority functionality immediately. In

particular, this approach involves a temporal

dimension to reduce the user’s cognitive workload.

Investigations regarding the complexity of an

ERP system interface have been recently undertaken

by (Parks, 2012). Substituting an existing standard

ERP UI, a simpler version has been designed to

compare the effects on task success and time

consumption with the traditional user interface. With

the help of an inventory use case, the authors

discussed the question: “What impact does the

complexity of ERP interfaces have on end-user

success and task time while completing a

transaction?” The results for this distinct use case

stated that “complexity was a significant variable

only for time spent working on the task, not success”

(Parks, 2012)

2.2.3 Similarity

The concept of similarity uses well known or de-

facto standards to familiarize the user with the

(probably new or rarely used) ERP system. The

interface has to be at least partially adapted from

another application that most users already learned

to use. The similarity might cover the visual

appearance, grouping of functionality or the

procedure to execute a distinct functionality. One

example for this strategy is Microsoft Dynamics™

which uses the appearance of the Office Suite

(Microsoft Corporation, 2013), which many users

are familiar with.

2.3 Visual Information Presentation

in Enterprise Applications

In (Parush et al., 2007), the hypothesis has been

corroborated, that “graphical visualization can

improve the performance of the human operator

using ERP systems for supply chain management”.

Therefore, the original display design of a

commercial ERP system has been compared with a

prototype which offered radial hyperbolic tree and

tree map visualizations next to the standard table

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form. Although the findings date back to 2007, they

revealed, that for “experienced and inexperienced

users, hyperbolic tree and tree maps graphical

visualizations improved performance”. These results

indicated promising potentials of visual information

presentation in native ERP environments.

Pioneering research in the field of visual

analytics has been done by (Card et al., 1999, p.6),

who classified user objectives into exploration,

discovery, explanation and decision making. (Yi et

al., 2007) complemented this research by

introducing primary interactions on information sets

such as filter, connect, select, reconfigure, encode or

detail. The domain of visual analytics is already an

important part of distinct enterprise applications and

in particular in the field of Business Intelligence

(BI). Especially for the domain of BI, several

solutions exist, which offer innovative visualizations

and direct interaction. (Tableau Software, 2012)

However, (Wang et al., 2011) state that “most

domain analytical practices generally vary from

organization to organization. This leads to diverse

designs of visual analytics systems in incorporating

domain analytical processes, making it difficult to

generalize the success from one domain to another.”

This problem is addressed by their proposed design

framework for visual analytics systems in

organizational environments. Herein, the Design

Artifacts Specification is also facilitated which

consists of visualization and interaction

combinations.

3 MOTIVATION

FOR A PARADIGM CHANGE

The non-exhaustive overview of related work

intended to briefly present relevant fields of ERP UI

research. It discussed strategies to reduce the

interface complexity as well as research on visual

information presentation. On the one hand, it can be

concluded that many efforts have been done to guide

the user through his or her current transaction and to

avoid handling errors. On the other hand, visual and

interactive information presentation is already an

essential part of specific enterprise applications

(such as BI), although it is not an essential “core

feature” of standard ERP systems.

The section on user satisfaction and usability

revealed, that the overall system complexity, user

guidance, identification of and the access to the

right functionality, availability of task-oriented

visualizations and detail and overview are essential

user interface challenges in ERP today. The

subsequent presentation of strategies to cope with

the interface complexity as well as the visual

information presentation already addressed these

deficiencies and proposed promising solutions.

However, the authors argue that there is still a niche

which has not been investigated so far. Whereas user

guidance as well as visual information presentation

are considered side by side in current research, the

conjunction of both strategies is not addressed. Since

both aim at reducing complexity and offer a more

intuitive and friction-free system access, their

conjunction could lead to an even better UI design.

The following section discusses two barriers in

current ERP interface design, which motivate the

establishment of the abstract interface model

presented in section 4.

A first major barrier can be seen in the absence

of a navigation guide, which not only leads the user

from one sequential transaction step to the next, but

also from an initial overview to the final place of

editing and execution. As introduced by

(Shneiderman, 1998), this navigation path covers

“Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on

demand.” This visual information seeking mantra

has not been applied to standard ERP systems so far,

and results in very limited capabilities to adjust the

level of detail. The adaptation of the level of detail

and therefore the adjustment of complexity is one of

the user needs identified in section 2.1. Hence,

current systems seem to lack a hierarchical user

interface guide, which actively supports the

navigation from overview to detail and vice versa.

This guide has to utilize mechanisms such as

abstraction, aggregation and reduction to achieve

orientation as well as detailing and selection to

achieve editing and execution.

A second barrier can be seen in the limited set of

available visualizations (see “layouts” and “UI

controls” in (Blankenship, 2008) as an example).

Current ERP systems rely on tables, lists, tree and

context menus, forms and standard diagrams. While

tables and forms are extremely appropriate to

visualize explicit values and to allow for quick

editing, they have limited capabilities to illustrate

complex processes, correlations, consequences,

dependencies, states or other types of implicit

information. “In general, since data in ERP systems

is highly structured, it lends itself to be presented

better graphically.” (Parush et al., 2007) In

consideration of the huge variety of visualization

types known in other domains today (cp. (Lima,

2012)), the limited set of UI elements in ERP

systems is insufficient. Furthermore, existing and

classifying databases for visualizations could be

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easily used to obtain appropriate and task-oriented

interface elements with ease (e.g. (Keck et al.,

2011)). Therefore, current ERP systems seem to lack

extended visualization capabilities, since most of the

available screens are too detailed, inflexible and

utilize only a fractional amount of current UI

potentials.

The authors assume, that existing usability

problems are significantly related to the user

interface and especially to these two barriers.

Nowadays, users are already familiar with

innovative devices and applications in their spare

time, which offer rich visualization and interaction

capabilities. In contrast, users are facing complex,

inflexible and often outdated UIs at work. The

hierarchical assistance in the form of an adaptive

and scalable user interface to adjust the level of

detail as well as the involvement of appropriate

visualizations to compare, explore and process

enterprise information could be able to overcome

current deficiencies.

4 TOWARDS AN ABSTRACT

INTERFACE MODEL

Examining the UI structure of ERP systems from an

interface designer’s point of view, common patterns

emerge. While most ERP systems seem to appear

quite different at first sight, commonalities in the

user objectives and the corresponding visual

modality become apparent. The user objectives can

be classified into three abstraction layers, reaching

from orientation and overview to search and filter

and finally ending up in editing and execution.

While the first layer gives an overview of available

functional categories of the system, the second layer

is focussing on a distinct information subset (e.g.

ERP modules for production, finance or customer).

Herein, the set of domain items can be textually

searched and filtered to identify an item or subset of

interest. The third layer is even more tailored

according to a selected business item type and

allows for editing the object’s properties and status

parameters.

4.1 Visual Modalities

Visual modalities present the enterprise information

in a distinct manner and are related to one of the

user’s objective layers described above. The first

visual modality, which corresponds to the objective

of orientation and overview, offers access to a

functional category primarily in the form of a list,

tree, or (hierarchical) menu. By selecting one of the

items herein, the user accesses the second layer and

its visual modality. This layer presents the desired

domain content (e.g. production orders) for the user

objective search and filter. As one of the most

generic visualizations, this second layer uses mostly

tables to present the items in rows and their

properties in columns. In addition, textual search and

filter mechanisms assist the user in finding the right

business item(s). By selecting one of these items, the

third layer and its visual modality will be entered

and enables the user to view and edit all item and

status parameters in a form.

Summarizing, the characteristics of the three

Layers are evolving from the user’s intention of

orientation to the intention of execution. Figure 1

summarizes the findings and illustrates the proposed

abstract interface model. It relates the abstract user

objectives and interactions from (Card et al., 1999,

Figure 1: Proposed abstract user interface model covering the levels of abstraction (left), the related user interactions from

(Yi et al., 2007)

and abstract user objectives from (Card et al., 1999, p.6).

Orientation

Execution

Intermediate

levels of

abstraction

category view wide very low

Modality

Scope Level of detail

item editing narrow very high

Modality

Scope Level of detail

Explore

Filter

Compare

Select

Evaluate

Execute

Decision

Making

Discovery

Encode

Explanation

Reconfigure

1,2

Connect

Detailing

Elaboration

Abstraction

Aggregation

Abstract user objectivesUser interface layer Layer characteristics

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p.6)and (Yi et al., 2007) presented in section 3 to the

proposed UI layers. The characteristics of these

layers are described by the modality, the scope of

the information and its level of detail. The main

concept aims to pick up the user by a general and

less complex interface to ease the initial system

access. After the user has been familiarized with the

available categories, a drill-down is executed to

reveal additional, but more specific items and

operations. The authors assume, that the appliance of

mechanisms such as detailing and abstraction, and

especially the encoding and reconfiguring based on

innovative visualization types are suitable to cope

with the complexity of current ERP systems (see

Figure 1, A). The adaptation mechanism addresses

the content, appearance, amount and composition of

the ERP information. According to (Yi et al., 2007),

the interaction across the diverse layers covers:

 Select: mark something as interesting

 Explore: show me something else

 Reconfigure: show me a different arrangement

 Encode: show me a different representation

 Abstract/Elaborate: show me more or less detail

 Filter: show me something conditionally

 Connect: show me related items

Hence, the authors propose to extend the meanings

of UI adaptation beyond the concepts discussed in

section 2.2, which was focused on dialog-based user

guidance, content reduction and similarity. Whereas

concepts in the related work addressed the

adaptation of the content by manipulating the

amount of interface items, also the adaptation of the

appearance and its composition should be

considered.

5 SUMMARY & FUTURE WORK

This paper argued a niche in usability research of

ERP systems regarding the graphical user interface.

The enormous number of industry branches and

users that are affected by usability problems has

motivated the further research in this paper. Selected

understandings of the term user satisfaction were

presented and the subsequent section highlighted

concrete usability problems in the field of ERP. The

section “Reducing ERP complexity” presented

promising solutions to cope with the complexity of

ERP user interfaces. The subsequent abstract

interface model addressed two barriers in current

ERP UI design, namely the hierarchical user

interface guide (from overview to execution) and

enhanced visualization capabilities (esp. the

appliance of rich visual interfaces adapted from

related fields such as information visualization and

visual analytics). This research is not fully

accomplished and therefore cannot present a proof

of concept yet. As further research is required, it will

focus on the intuitive implementation of the

“vertical” UI guide and the identification of

appropriate visualizations to bridge the gap between

the layer of overview and the layer of detail. Finally,

it can be concluded, that future ERP systems could

offer two major improvements related to the user

interface:

 Offering a hierarchical (“vertical”) UI guide

besides existing guidance approaches (for

“horizontal” dialog steps). Especially untrained

users are uncertain about available functionality

and face a level of detail that might be too high for

their current objective. By offering a simplified

and aggregated entry point to the system, which

extends and concretizes its features, users are

enabled to discover the subsequent (and more

detailed) layers on their own.

 Extending the visual capabilities and enhance the

appropriateness for complex correlations of ERP

information. Experienced users who are aware of

the underlying business processes are concluding

decisions based on their knowledge and mental

model. Especially untrained users are often

unaware of potential side-effects which might

result in operating errors and uncertainty. The

mapping of the user’s process and domain

knowledge to system operations and information

can be enhanced by the utilization of innovative

and up-to-date visualization and interaction

techniques.

To achieve these ambitious goals, a prototypical

framework has been designed which is based on the

Silverlight/ .NET platform and programmed in C#. It

allows for the definition of the scalable user

interface and comprises the specification of layers,

their type of visual content (table, map, circular

diagram etc.) and the transitions between these

layers (esp. semantic changes). The data can be

acquired from several types of data source and

combined according to defined join operations. With

the help of an editor, the visualization and data

layers are mapped on each other to specify the final

user interface and its composition, behavior and

appearance.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Christian Lambeck would like to thank

the European Union and the Free State

of Saxony/ Germany for funding this

work. Special thanks are also due to

Maria Piechnick, Thomas Lambeck

and Frank Förster for their enthusiastic

participation.

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