Designing Usable Bioinformatics Tools for Specialized Users

Abstract

Visualization - the process of interpreting data into visual forms - is increasingly important in science as data grows rapidly in volume and complexity. A common challenge faced by many biologists is how to benefit from this data deluge without being overwhelmed by it. Here, our main interest is in the visualization of genomes, sequence alignments, phylogenies and systems biology data. Bringing together new technologies, including design theory, and applying them into the above three areas in biology will improve the usability and user interaction. The main goal of this paper is to apply design principles to make bioinformatics resources, evaluate them using different usability methods, and provide recommended steps to design usable tools.