http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002554
Designers
have a saying that “the joy of an early release lasts but a short time.
The bitterness of an unusable system lasts for years.” It is indeed
disappointing to discover that your data resources are not being used to
their full potential. Not only have you invested your time, effort, and
research grant on the project, but you may face costly redesigns if you
want to improve the system later. This scenario would be less likely if
the product was designed to provide users with exactly what they need,
so that it is fit for purpose before its launch. We work at
EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), and we consult
extensively with life science researchers to find out what they need
from biological data resources. We have found that although users
believe that the bioinformatics community is providing accurate and
valuable data, they often find the interfaces to these resources tricky
to use and navigate. We believe that if you can find out what your users
want even before you create the first mock-up of a system, the final
product will provide a better user experience. This would encourage more
people to use the resource and they would have greater access to the
data, which could ultimately lead to more scientific discoveries. In
this paper, we explore the need for a user-centred design (UCD) strategy
when designing bioinformatics resources and illustrate this with
examples from our work at EMBL-EBI. Our aim is to introduce the reader
to how selected UCD techniques may be successfully applied to software
design for bioinformatics.
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