supporting life scientists via end user programming luke church computer laboratory, university of...
TRANSCRIPT
Supporting Life Scientists via End User Programming
Luke ChurchComputer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
Microsoft eScience - Dec ‘08
With thanks to co-authors:
Agenda
End User Programming (EUP)– What is it?– How is it being used?
Supporting Scientists• 1: Usability
– Applying EUP to improve our tools– State of the art: Cognitive Dimensions of Notations
• 2: Executable Biology: Life as Computation– Successes– Challenge: ‘natural abstractions’
End User Programming?
DirectManipulation
Programming
Actions on objectsActions on lots of objectsActions when I’m not hereCommunicating intent
Abstraction
Mainstream Usability
Professional Programmers
End User Programming
End Users
Power, Expressiveness, Communication
Current UI paradigm
End Users Can Program
A few million users...
Given the right problem and tools
End Users Can ProgramGiven the right problem and tools
(From http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-02-10.html)
Why give EUP a name?
• Programming is a different cognitive task– Direct Manipulation usability methods don’t help much
Reasonable from a direct manipulation perspective
But has Hidden Dependencies poor Provisionality poor Progressive Evaluation etc.
Why give EUP a name?
• Programming is a different cognitive task– EUP analysis tools acknowledge this
• By understanding that something is programming• Improved design discussions
• Text or graphics?• Impact of type systems?
• More appropriate usability techniques• Cognitive Dimensions of Notations• Attention Investment Framework• User Experience of Intentional Information
Modelling tools
• A particular type of programming language– We used analytical EUP techniques to improve usability– Small user study showed a good provisional result
– Prototype now in refinement
Cognitive Dimensions
• State of the art usability technique– Consider an environment, along a number of dimensions
– How defuse is the information?– How viscous is it?– How many abstractions does the user have to learn?– Does the user have to prematurely commit to a structure?
– Highlight areas of likely problems, suggest design manoeuvres
Successes
• Identify and fix deep usability problems
• Academically verified and supported• 50+ extension papers, widely cited within community• Theoretical testing, practical adoption• Workshops, tutorials, handbook in progress
• Increasing adoption• Scientific tools• API design at Microsoft’s• Security usability• Spreadsheet UI design• ...
Executable Biology
• Executable models of living processes
Compare predictions to data
Suggest new experiments
Adjust model
Executable Biology
• Successes– Experimentally verified refinements in regulatory models of
various organisms– Proposed new concurrency models to reflect biological
processes– Successful application of formal verification techniques to
laboratory data
• Challenges– Challenges laboratory practice around timed measurements in
experiments– Develop computational models that are more suitable for
biological modelling
Executable Biology
• New Abstractions?– Need for abstraction processes that work with biology– Translucent, socially supported, computationally tractable
– Abstraction problem in computers, let alone biology– Possibility for great mutual benefit
• What does it mean to understand a program?– Pragmatic computationalism, it is useful to consider: life
computational model
– What does it mean to ‘understand’ a program independent of a goal?
On Abstraction...
• Abstraction carries Intention– Classifications/Abstractions are a shaping perspective
– E.g. International Classification of Disease
– Abstracting biological systems => shaping what we can know– What questions are interesting?
– Traditionally decided by the scientific community
• Accelerating time to discovery?– We are deciding what questions are answerable
– Adoption requires supporting social processes– Responsibility to make answers useful
Summary
• Usability• Usability is crucial to adoption and efficiency• Standard techniques: necessary but not sufficient• End User Programming techniques help
• Executable Biology• Pragmatic computationalism• Understand living systems like programs, positive initial results• Deeper challenges• What does biology mean by understand?• Provide new abstraction processes, with social support
Accelerating discovery by providing new ways of thinking about biological systems