The Design of Usable Access for a Large Open Microscopy Environment
With the growing importance of technology as a means to support scientists in conducting investigations, so there is an increasing challenge of ensuring that this technology can be used without excessive effort by the intended audience for the appropriate purpose.
Many scientific software development projects are small-scale, and tend to be developed by and for groups with very specific requirements. When attempts are made to widen uptake and use, usability challenges tend to emerge. As e-science - using networks to enable collaborative science to be carried out on large and disparate quantities of data - emerges as a discipline, the importance of usability of software interfaces to allow sharing and analysis of data is critical.
In biological miscroscopy, the transition of a microscope's output from an "image", recorded on paper or film, to digitally recorded "data" has created new demands for storage, analysis and visualisation that are not adequately met in any available software package. With effective methods for management and visualisation, the potential for this data to contribute to the advance of scientific knowledge quickly is boundless. without these methods, the data and analysis carried out by individual scientists is likely to be repetitive and isolated, and tracking analysis that has been carried out will become increasingly difficult to manage.
The development of the Open Microscopy Environment (OME) project is the first collaborative attempt to develop and deliver adaptable data management software tools for biological microscopy. While the OME access tools have shown significant promise in addressing this problem, there is an ongoing need to optimise their usability - for scientists already using the tools, and also to encourage uptake amongst new users. Further, the focus of usability is not just on making standard tasks as straightforward as possible to complete, but also on opening doors to new paths for scientific investigation and collaboration.
The expertise in HCI and design ethnography at the University of Dundee's School of Computing combined with the existing OME development activity and the large amount of biological imaging work taking place in the nearby School of Life Sciences gives us an excellent opportunity to address these real challenges in an innovative and effective way.
Funder: EPSRC
Start Date: 01/04/2006
End Date: 30/03/2010
For further information about the The Design of Usable Access for a Large Open Microscopy Environment project please contact Professor Peter Gregor.