Apr 29 2013

Burgeoning sketch-noter…

 

You may have noticed that I have recently added a new section to this blog on sketchnotes.

Example of my first attempt at sketchnoting

Example of my first attempt at sketchnoting (from a talk on “Beautiful Complexity”, HCID 2013 conference)

 

There is a whole community of creative folks producing sketch notes (for example, just search Slideshare for ‘sketchnotes’ and you will see the number of talks on the subject). There is even a sketch note army (honestly!)

 

Anyway, I thought I would have a go myself, and to track my progress I will be adding my own creations to this blog going forward.  Bye for now!

 

 

 

 

 

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Apr 9 2013

Highlights talk at ISMB/ECCB Berlin in July

 

I’m really pleased to mention that my talk ‘Designing with the user in mind: how UCD can work for bioinformatics‘ has been selected for the Highlights Track at the ISMB/ECCB 2013 conference.  This conference is the 21st Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology/ 12th European Conference on Computational Biology, and it takes place on July 19-23, at the Messe Berlin (ICC Berlin), Germany.

The highlights track is about presenting exciting, novel, and field-shaping work, which admittedly is a bit daunting, but it offers a great opportunity too.  My hope is that the talk, and subsequent conversations, will highlight:

  • why bioinformatics needs UX
  • practical tips on how to apply UCD to complex data services
  • general awareness of UCD, since the UX community is not traditionally represented at ISMB/ECCB

Hopefully, see you there!

 

Screen Shot 2013-04-09 at 16.34.55

The world’s bioinformatics conference of choice – this year featuring UX from the EBI

 

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Mar 21 2013

Real world user-centred design (UCD): case study from the European Bioinformatics Institute

Today’s news is that the latest article I have co-authored has just been published in BMC Bioinformatics (e-published before final formatting):

de Matos P, Cham JA, et al. (2013) Enzyme Portal: a case study in applying user-centred design methods in bioinformatics. BMC Bioinformatics 14: 103

It’s the first ‘how to’ guide for applying user-centred design (UCD) to websites for bioinformatics. Hurrah!

So what is the article about?

I believe that as a community, bioinformatics is notorious for producing hard-to-use, often technical, software that turns off the wet-lab biologist.   There are lots of reasons for this, including the way projects are funded, and the fact that software developers decide how the software looks and behaves, amongst other things.  Bottom line is – software isn’t generally designed based on the needs of users (who in this case are usually academic researchers in bio-sciences).   Our article aims to address this situation by suggesting how we can use UCD to improve the usability of bioinformatics resources.

What does it add to the state of the art?

As you will know, UCD is an approach for designing user interfaces/ websites, where the needs of users dictate the design.  The aim is to create services that are both useful and easy to use for the specific target audience. It has been successfully used in e-commerce websites, retail sites, gaming, mobile apps and other domains, however, case studies about how to increase usability of scientific software are scarce in the literature, and virtually non-existent for complex data domains, such as bioinformatics.  So, guess what – we wrote something about it – taking Enzyme Portal as a real life example.

What exciting stuff will you find in our article?

You will get (for free!):

  • step-by-step account of the UCD process we used; see Figure 1 for a heads-up on this and Additional file 1 for the full algorithm ;-)   Enjoy!  (Remember each UCD process will be different depending on your project, how you can access users, the time and resources you have).
  • toolkit of templates so you can get started NOW for your own bioinformatics (or other) project.  Including: consent form, card sorting canvas (Table 1), usability testing scenarios and tasks, personas and more!
  • ammunition to tell your boss/PI that you should start doing UCD!
Persona

Cartoon from the biochemist persona ‘Eunice’ – Figure 2 in the paper

Why have we bothered?

The dream is that our article will inspire our peers working in bioinformatics, or other scientific fields, to improve the user-friendliness of their resources on the web, so that the usage and impact of them on science may grow.  But what about world peace, you say?  Honestly, I think this is a noble cause – because otherwise we are not getting the value we should be getting from publicly-funded bioinformatics (Yes that’s your taxes).

 

Anyway, we hope you enjoy the paper and get motivated to join in with your own UX stuff soon!  JC out!

 

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Mar 6 2013

The European Bioinformatics Institute has a new website…

Hello!  Yes, it’s big news this week: the EBI launched its new website on Monday morning!

EBI website Kaizen

It has taken many months to prepare the new website, and the EBI will continue rolling out improvements in the coming months to bring all pages into the new look-and-feel.  It’s such a huge website, including so many different service brands and huge amounts of data, that there will inevitably be some ‘fixing the plane whilst flying’. This is a good thing if you believe, like Lou Rosenfeld (UX guru and publisher), that ‘Redesign’ is a dirty word .  [Quote: "Every time you redesign, God kills a kitten".]

Redesigns tend to be full overhauls.  This is not always great, since they can be driven by politics, have poorly defined scope, and are destined to fall short of solving all your problems ‘once and for all’.  In contrast, continuous improvement/change (a la ‘Kaizen’ of the management world) can lead to a site that can shift to meet the organisation’s and users’ needs.  The result is happier developers and end users, for the long term- even if it means having a ‘harlequin’ website at times.

User-centred design, EBI style

I was going to write a longer post about how we applied user experience techniques to design the behaviour and visuals of the new website, but the EBI’s Associate Director, Ewan Birney has written a lot about it already, see: Ewan’s blog.  One thing to note, is how the EBI looked to the BBC’s experience, in particular the BBC global experience language (GEL), for rethinking their web offering.  We aimed to create an ‘EBI-ness’ about our pages, but still having distinct service brands within it – much like the BBC has specific brands (like Dr. Who) within the overarching BBC brand.

Take a look and let us know what you think of it!

EBI launched the new site on 4 March 2013

EBI launched the new site on 4 March 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nov 24 2012

Article published in Nucleic Acids Research

 

I’m happy to let you know that our article on EMBL-EBI’s Enzyme Portal has been published in Nucleic Acids Research journal this week (November 21st).

Enzyme Portal is a new EBI website that integrates various types of publicly-available information about proteins with enzymatic activity, such as enzymes and protein receptors.  This information includes 3D protein structures, reactions & pathways, small molecules (such as drug-like compounds) and links to relevant scientific literature.  It was developed using user-centered design techniques, which we describe briefly in this NAR paper, but also in the article published in PLoS Computational Biology earlier this year. The UX work that we carried out to design enzyme portal included developing personae, interviews with users, paper prototyping, usability testing and user workshops (see picture below for an example of a workshop artefact).

Enzyme features chosen by one of the teams in a user workshop

 

 

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Oct 8 2012

Baby Cham has arrived!

Our beautiful daughter, Elsa Vivienne Grace, was born on Saturday 22nd September.  My husband, David, and I are totally thrilled with her and thank God for her safe and happy delivery into the world!

Baby Elsa with Mummy

 

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Aug 27 2012

Things may go quiet for a while…

…because I am on maternity leave until sometime in 2013.  Our baby is due late September.  I’ll keep you posted on the news.  Wish me (us) luck!

Last day with bump in the office

 

 

 

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Jul 13 2012

Bioinformatics Meets User-Centred Design: A Perspective

I’m really happy to announce that our latest article on user experience in bioinformatics has just been published in peer-reviewed open access journal, PLoS Computational Biology.

The citation is PLoS Comput Biol 8(7): e1002554. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002554

Thanks to everyone involved – especially to Katrina, who carried out the interviews with myself and Paula, and put a lot of the manuscript together.  We hope this article is just the start of a trend towards more user experience-related articles in bioinformatics and in the wider life sciences community.  I feel that the lessons learned could also apply in other complex domains, such as engineering, technology and physical sciences.

For PLoS journals you can post comments on the article.  I look forward to hearing what you think, enjoy!

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Jul 6 2012

Fancy doing my job?

I will be going on maternity leave in August, so EMBL-EBI are advertising for a maternity cover position for my role “User Experience Analyst”. It’s a one year contract, based in Hinxton near Cambridge, UK. (Ref no. EBI_00232).  To apply go here.

User Experience Analyst – 1 yr maternity cover position at EMBL-EBI

Job Description

We are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic user experience analyst to provide maternity cover for a period of one year. The post will be based at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) located on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Cambridge in the UK.
The successful candidate should have practical experience of various user-centred design approaches and be able to demonstrate how they have applied established methodologies. In particular, the candidate will have experience in the following;
  • Applying techniques for user research/capturing user requirements
  • Carrying out usability testing of prototype websites
  • Developing user surveys.
The post holder will also liaise with service developers to guide the style and structure of our services. This is an exciting role giving direct contact with scientists and service developers and allowing real influence over the look and feel of extensive and widely-used services at the cutting-edge of life-science.
The EBI is a world-leading bioinformatics centre providing biological data to the scientific community, with expertise in data storage, analysis and representation. This biomolecular information is made available through extensive services accessed via its web pages (www.ebi.ac.uk). Optimising the usefulness of these services to the user community is an ongoing and challenging task.

Qualifications and Experience

  • The successful candidate will have a life science degree (and likely a higher degree such as Master or Ph.D.) and have some experience in bioinformatics. Qualifications in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)/ergonomics or web design will also be considered. (S)he will have 3 to 5 years experience in delivering user experience projects and this should include experience in a service provision role with face to face user contact. It would be highly beneficial if the successful candidate had experience with web-based user experience software, such as remote/virtual usability testing and card sorting tools.
  • Experience of web technologies, scripting languages and HTML would be a distinct advantage as would a knowledge of Drupal content management systems.
  • This post explicitly bridges human and technical skills and will suit someone who enjoys interaction, and who can capture diverse user feedback, synthesising it into coherent recommendations, while simultaneously taking into account technical considerations.
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills are required as the post holder will be interacting with a wide variety of people on a daily basis.

Closing date

5th August 2012

How to apply

Please apply online through www.embl.org/jobs

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May 24 2012

Careers day at DKFZ Heidelberg

What do I do, and how did I get here?

This is the subject of the talk I am giving today at the careers day at DKFZ (German Cancer Research Institute) in Heidelberg, Germany.  The slides will be available on Slideshare from the organisers soon.

What does a user experience (UX) analyst do?

My way to UX…

My route, from bioinformatics doctorate to User Experience Analyst, wasn’t perhaps typical – but I think no one’s journey ever is.  Other than maybe via HCI (human-computer interaction) or design education, I’m not certain that there is a typical way to get into UX.  Employers seem to look for how well connected you are, the experience you have, and also any transferable skills.  For bioinformatics, an understanding of the science also helps – making it easier, for example, to create plausible usability testing scenarios and tasks, and workshops that work for scientific/computational audiences.

 

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