Sticks, Balls or a Ribbon? Results of a Formative User Study with Bioinformaticians

Abstract

User interfaces in modern bioinformatics tools are designed for experts. They are too complicated for novice users such as bench biologists. This report presents the full results of a formative user study as part of a domain and requirements analysis to enhance user interfaces and collaborative environments for multidisciplinary teamwork. Contextual field observations, questionnaires and interviews with bioinformatics researchers of different levels of expertise and various backgrounds were performed in order to gain insight into their needs and working practices. The analysed results are presented as a user profile description and user requirements for designing user interfaces that support the collaboration of multidisciplinary research teams in scientific collaborative environments. Although the number of participants limits the generalisability of the findings, the combination of recurrent observations with other user analysis techniques in real-life settings makes the contribution of this user study novel.

Keywords: User Study, Bioinformatics, Human-Computer Interaction, Co-Located Collaboration, Visualisations

JEL Classification: C92, D70, C63