ABSTRACT
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 208 Usability Issues in Designing Usability into the Genome Project ................ 210
The Necessity for a Single, Unified User Interface ............................... 211 The Need for Domain Expertise and Field Testing and
Observation ..................................................................................... 212 Acquiring the Necessary Domain Expertise .............................. 213 The Necessity for Field Studies and Observation ..................... 213
Developmental Methodology .................................................................. 213 Requirements for Design .............................................................. 214 Usability Analysis through Field Studies and Contextual
Inquiries ............................................................................ 214 Primary Design and Usability Challenges ............................................. 215
The Necessity for Supporting Collaborative, Complex Work ................................................................. 215
The Necessity for Supporting the Paradox of Structure for Complex System Design .......................................... 216
Design and Usability Methodologies ...................................................... 218 Field Observation ........................................................................... 218 User Involvement .......................................................................... 218 Extended Contextual Analysis ..................................................... 219
Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 220 Reader Take-Aways ............................................................................................ 221 References ............................................................................................................. 221
This chapter discusses the difficulty of performing usability analysis for complex systems and provides a case study of a development project for a genomics research software system. The system had to accommodate the needs of major genomic projects, including support for researchers, physicians, statisticians, and system administrators. While performing field studies and contextual inquiries, the development team learned that they would have to initiate more rigorous user-centered design practices, including radical methods such as hiring a user, conducting extended contextual inquiries, and performing tests with smaller units of the system. The team learned that it had to design a system that did the following:
Imposed a single-user interface on the thirty-odd software packages • used in the system Promoted collaboration among researchers• Allowed the “state” of a system to be saved at any point and stored• Provided a linear structure that was simultaneously flexible enough • to work with what is often very nonlinear work processes Enabled customization so that it would work well with the wide • range of both current and future genomic research methodologies
The team’s technical communicators likewise faced the challenge of designing information products to accommodate the multivariate, nonlinear nature of genomic research.
