Designing usable bio-information architectures

Abstract

Bioinformatics websites offer to the life science large community repositories of information ranging from genes, genomes, proteins, experimental data and their integration, with the aim of supporting the elucidation of biological processes. As the bioinformatics community increasingly relies on the design, sharing and use of web-based resources, it is important to systematically address the usability of these applications and to deliver a more rewarding user experience to researchers. The bioinformatics community is also acknowledging the role that Human-Computer Interaction can play to improve the usability of these systems. In the context of a project aiming at improving the usability of large bioinformatics websites, we carried out an in-depth usability analysis and conceptual redesign of a well-known protein repository, with the aim of characterizing information architecture usability problems and providing corresponding design solutions to improve the user experience. This design has been validated and refined using interactive prototypes with users, usability experts and domain experts, and opens a new set of navigation opportunities which has the potential to improve the research work of bioinformaticians. Although being a preliminary study, the research reveals generic information architecture and navigation issues which have design implications for browsing-intensive bioinformatics repositories at large. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.