Using UX and Visualization to

give you an edge?

Paula de Matos

Jason Dykes

My name is Paula de Matos

I live in Cambridge, UK

I am an Independent

UX Analyst

I am South African and

Portuguese.

I have a special UX interest

in complex data and

visualization.

Tweet at @Paula_deMatos

My name is Jason Dykes

I live in Leicestershire, UK

I am an Professor of

Visualization at CITY Uni

I am a Geographer and a

Computer Scientist.

I am interested in using

visualization in a broad range

of domains - transport,

energy, ecology, geography,

intelligence analysis.

Flickr: Doritweber

Design scenarioLibrary visualization

Meet Jessica

• Age: 35

Occupation: Local authority

research officer

Goals

Jessica’s main goal is to

determine which libraries are

the most successful and why?

Using this information she can

hopefully transfer this

knowledge to less successful

libraries and/or decrease

redundant library services.

Scenario – where and when to keep libraries open?

“Stockholm library” CC BY Samanthan Marx

Your task

Sketch a visualization that will help Jessica gain some

insight into allocating library resources?

“Darts” CC BY Richard Matthews

Read and discuss the task

• Read the persona and task.

• Find somebody else with the same coloured dot sticker.

• Introduce yourself and discuss the task.

UX and complex dataPaula de Matos

Flickr: Stefson

Peter Morville:

UX Honecomb

What is User Experience (UX)

A good UX example: The whole package

What happens when you don’t consider UX?

Flickr: Adam Frame

A UX design Process

Study

Design

Build

Evaluate

UX in complex data environments

• highly inter-connected

• has depth (big picture and high level of granularity

important)

• high volume, big scale

• unfamiliar since it is a ‘niche’/’expert’ field (niche

vocab.)

• needing security/ privacy/ authentication

• real time-critical

Complex data environments have data that is/ may be…

EMBL-EBI EuroHub for Bioinformatics in

Hinxton

• Part of the European Molecular Biology

Laboratory

• International, non-profit research institute

• 540 people work at EMBL-EBI, 48 nations

represented

• Average age: 37 yrs

• At the heart of modern biology research

• Science of storing, retrieving and analysing

biological information

• An interdisciplinary science involving

biologists, biochemists, computer scientists

and mathematicians

What is bioinformatics?

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The UX design process and

complex data

UX and Bioinformatics: Enzyme Portal

I can’t find

anything?

We have over 10

databases dealing

with enzymes

Data is loosely

linked and

mismatched

I can’t see

anything?

Enzyme Portal UX process

Stakeholder Analysis

User Research: Interviews

Data Analysis: Canvas Sort

Prototype and Design

Evaluation: Usability Testing

• Preferably in their own environment

• Observe and understand context

• Ask questions, learn and validate

Interviewing users and understanding

their complex data

What is important to you?

What do you want?

What happens if you ask?

Interviewing with complex data

• Learn some of the basics in advance.

• Asking participants to remember “critical incidents”.

• Ask open ended questions to help participants discover

the data?

• Don’t make assumptions – data is complex!

Personas were useful research output

Modeling user stories/data stories

Created using yWorks yEd Graph Editor

Data Analysis: Establish priorities and

Information Architecture

Canvas Sort Result #1: Relative priorities of data items and

actions

Result #2: Model of the users mental model

UX and information

visualization

Study

Design

Build

Evaluate

Visualization design process

DATA

Evaluate – how effective is the Vis

Task 1: User research

Pair up and interview each other for 5 minutes.

Goal: try to uncover further success measures in library

usage.

Use open ended research questions such as

• “Can you describe the last time you used a library?”

• “Why did you go to the library?”

“Crosshairs - success” CC BY www.flazingo.com

Task 2: Sketching a design

Sketch a visualization design to help Jessica uncover

which are the most successful libraries.

Task 3: Design evaluation

• Groups or about 4 or 5.

• Group facilitator needed to control timings.

• Each group member spends 1 minute describing their

design.

• As a group try to find one positive, one limitation and one

enhancement for each design in your group.