Citation: , The Design of Commercial Conditions, in: Jusletter IT 26 February 2015
Introduction. The role of contract within an organization can hardly be overestimated. Along with legal functions, a contract serves as a perfect communication tool and helps to minimize the risks. Nevertheless, a contract is often perceived as a purely legal document; a formality, necessary only for lawyers, and used exceptionally in court. A classical commercial contract is often too long, difficult to read and just not attractive to the majority of business managers. The aim of the following research is to find ways and techniques to change a commercial contract in such a way, that it engages readers to make a full use of a contract. The special focus is attributed to the language and design aspects of the contract design. Methodology. The cooperation with the international rail company Bombardier Transportation allowed to test the effectiveness of language and design modifications applied to the contract within the real life scenario. The prototypes of two sections of the General Terms and Conditions of Bombardier Transportation were created using language and designed tools discovered during the research. The comprehension and usability test conducted to compare the performance of the traditional and modified versions of the commercial conditions revealed a number of important findings. Results. Overall, the results suggest that the modified version of the contract is user-friendlier and has a greater level of usability, than the traditional version. The version of commercial conditions crafted using the special language and design tools allows the users to work faster and more accurately. The participants of the test preferred the modified version in all the aspects of the contract and indicated that it is easier to work with. Conclusion. The results of the experiment indicate that new approaches to the contract drafting that consider different users of the contracts, but not just lawyers, have potential to significantly influence the performance of the commercial contracts by changing the way the contracts are designed. Moreover, the findings of the research provide a range of methods and tools that can be used to draft the better contracts and change the existing ones, so that they become more relevant to managers, and therefore, perform better.
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