Bioinformatics Meets User-Centred Design: A Perspective
Bioinformatics Meets User-Centred Design: A Perspective
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002554
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发表时间：
2012-07-01
影响因子：
4.3
通讯作者：
Steinbeck, Christoph
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Pavelin, Katrina;Cham, Jennifer A.;Steinbeck, Christoph
设计人员有一句话：“早发布的喜悦只能维持很短的时间。无法使用的系统的苦涩会持续数年。”发现您的数据资源没有得到充分利用，这确实令人失望。你不仅在这个项目上投入了时间、精力和研究经费，而且如果你想以后改进这个系统，你可能会面临昂贵的重新设计。如果产品的设计目的是为用户提供他们所需要的东西，以便它在发布之前就适合用途，这种情况就不太可能发生。我们在EMBL-欧洲生物信息学研究所工作，我们与生命科学研究人员进行广泛的咨询，以找出他们需要从生物数据资源中获得什么。我们发现，尽管用户认为生物信息学社区正在提供准确和有价值的数据，但他们经常发现这些资源的界面很难使用和导航。我们相信，如果你在创建第一个系统模型之前就能发现你的用户想要什么，最终的产品将提供更好的用户体验。这将鼓励更多的人使用资源，他们将有更多的机会获得数据，这最终可能导致更多的科学发现。在这篇文章中，我们探讨了在设计生物信息学资源时需要以用户为中心的设计(UCD)策略，并用我们在EMBL-EBI工作的例子来说明这一点。我们的目的是向读者介绍如何选择UCD技术可以成功地应用于生物信息学的软件设计。
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.