Part of a talk given by Anna Divoli at EBI in April 2011. Outline of three usability studies conducted for the development of the BioText Search Engine. http://biosearch.berkeley.edu/

1. European Bioinformatics Institute 13 - Apr - 2011 Human factors in computational biology: from mathematical models to user interfaces Anna Divoli

3. BioText Search Engine Marti A. Hearst, Anna Divoli, Harendra Guturu, Alex Ksikes, Preslav Nakov, Michael A. Wooldridge and Jerry Ye (2007) “BioText Search Engine: beyond abstract search” Bioinformatics, 23: 2196-2197 motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two, three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

4. Tools for: machines… workflows… end users! motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two, three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

10. Three Usability Studies for BioText: Study 2 2. Study that explored whether or not to show term-extracted entity information to users Divoli, A., Hearst, M.A. and Wooldridge, M.A. (2008) "Evidence for Showing Gene/Protein Name Suggestions in Bioscience Literature Search", PSB 2008 First Goal: Determine whether or not bioscience literature searchers wish to see related term suggestions (gene and protein names) Second Goal: Determine how to display to users term expansions - online surveys: 38 & 19 participants motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two , three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

11. Related Information Type Avg rating # selecting 1 or 2 Gene’s Synonyms 4.4 2 Gene’s Synonyms refined by organism 4.0 2 Gene’s Homologs 3.7 5 Genes from same family: parents 3.4 7 Genes from same family: children 3.6 4 Genes from same family: siblings 3.2 9 Genes this gene interacts with 3.7 4 Diseases this gene is associated with 3.4 6 Chemicals/drugs this gene is associated with 3.2 8 Localization information for this gene 3.7 3 1 2 3 4 5 (Do NOT want this) (Neutral) (REALLY want this) Study 2a: Results

12. Design 1: baseline motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two , three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

13. Design 2: links motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two , three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

14. Design 3: checkboxes motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two , three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

15. Design 4: categories motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two , three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments

16. Study 2b: Results motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two , three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments Design Participants who rated design 1st or 2nd Average rating (1=low, 4=high) # % 3: checkboxes 15 79 3.3 4: categories 10 53 2.6 2: links 9 47 2.5 1: baseline 0 0 1.6

18. 3. Final study once the project was completed Divoli, A., Hearst, M.A. and Wooldridge, M.A. (2010) "Full Text and Figure Display Improves Bioscience Literature Search ”, PLoS ONE 5(4): e9619 Four Hypotheses: H1: Most participants would have a favorable response to the display of the articles’ figures next to the search results, for most information seeking tasks. H2: Most participants would have a favorable response to searching over the full text , as opposed to just the abstract and title, for the primary search view. H3: Some participants would find the grid view with caption search appealing for specialized information seeking tasks. H4: Some participants would find the table view with table text and caption search appealing for specialized information seeking tasks . motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two, three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments Three Usability Studies for BioText: Study 3 - in person surveys: 20 participants   15/20 10/20 7/20

19. motivation  BioText  HCI  Usability Studies: one, two, three  Conclusions  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments Study 3: Results Text search Figure caption search Table search Frequently 15 8 6 Sometimes 4 7 4 Rarely 0 4 7 Never 0 0 2 Undecided 1 1 1

22. Acknowledgements Andrey Rzhetsky Eneida Mendonca James Evans Sarah White Zoe Nyssa Rzhetsky Lab LICR pre-interviews (4) interviews (28) focus group (7) Very grateful to all the experts/participants! Funded by: Marti Hearst Mike Wooldridge Preslav Nakov Jerry Ye Ariel Schwartz Harendra Gututru Alex Ksikes NSF, Genentech study 1 (8) study 2 (48) study 3 (20) motivation  [usability studies…]  [expert opinions…]  acknowledgments