Towards a User-Centered Design Approach for the OpenEBench Benchmarking Platform
Creators: name: Brüchner, Dominik
name: Gonzalez-Uriarte, Asier
name: Portell-Silva, Laura
name: Gelpí, Josep Ll.
name: Capella-Gutierrez, Salvador
Publisher: name: F1000 Research Limited
Year: 2022

description: OpenEBench (http://openebench.bsc.es) is the ELIXIR gateway to benchmarking evaluations and technical monitoring for bioinformatics tools, web servers, and workflows. The infrastructure supports community-driven benchmarking, helps monitor software quality in life sciences, and contributes to best practices in research software development.<br> <br> Complex research software projects are frequently developed with a strong focus on technical requirements, mainly when the target group consists of developers and researchers. Focusing on technical requirements often leads to organically grown user interfaces and systems, which are difficult to use and navigate. User Experience (UX) issues can lead to a smaller user scope, potentially disappointed users, and lower content-quality perception, including hard-earned research results.<br> <br> We tackle this problem by applying qualitative and quantitative user-centered design methods to OpenEBench for building a solid understanding of user needs, requirements, and context of use. Specifically, we have used user story mapping, target group analysis, interviews, personas, surveys, mock-ups, and user tests. This approach avoids costly system extensions and redesigns while offering a better, need-focused UX. We learned that, while these methods should be applied before development, an existing system's user experience can still be improved and overhauled efficiently, paving the way for a state-of-the-art user experience in research software development.<br> <br> <b>1. Research Phase</b><br> In the research phase, we apply qualitative methods to understand the user, domain, and product.<br> This allows us to deduct insights for the problem definition and design process.<br> <b>→ Design the right thing<br> <br> Applied Methods:</b> <b>User Story Mapping</b>: In a workshop with the openEBench product team, we matched the platform’s user types with tasks, user goals, and technology touchpoints <b>Qualitative Interviews</b>: 6 current users, 3 future users, and 2 stakeholders were (semi-structured) interviewed about expectations and challenges with benchmarking in Bioinformatics <b>Personas</b>: We deducted archetypes for openEBench <b>Heuristic Markup</b>: We audited the current User Experience The key findings were condensed within a user research report, to deliver a foundation for further project planning and possible improvements in the design and development phase.<br> <br> <br> <b>2. Design and Development Phase</b><br> This phase is all about solution design and prototyping, developing and testing possible solutions, and collecting early feedback.<br> <b>→ Design things right<br> <br> Applied Methods:</b> <b>Low-fidelity Mockups</b>: We used lo-fi wireframes as a cheap tool to validate assumptions and identify existing problems. <b>High-Fidelity Mockups</b>: With Hi-fi prototypes we aimed at being pixel-perfect, close to the final product, and showing all the visual and typographic design details. <b>User Tests</b> were conducted in different variations, focusing on the discovery of usability problems <b>The Design System</b> includes a style guide with a design-based description of design elements <br> <b>Conclusion</b><br> This iterative approach to design and development avoids costly system extensions and redesigns while offering a better, need-focused UX.<br> Prototyping and user tests can be used in early development phases, to improve and overhaul an existing system's UX efficiently.