Putting Babel fish in our ears – creating a language for developers to talk to infrastructure designers and users for mutual gain.
Keeva Connolly2, Steven Manos2, Winnie Mok2, Tiff Nelson2, Nigel Ward2, Farah Zaib Khan2, Peter Brenton1, Kathryn Hall1 1Atlas of Living Australia 2Australian BioCommons Australia
Abstract
Help us explore the challenges that Business Analysts (BAs) and User Experience (UX) designers face when harmonising the seemingly discordant needs of researchers and development teams.
BAs and UX designers sit at the interface between infrastructure builders and the user-communities they service. A crucial part of their role is reconnaissance, gathering the user-stories and use-cases for which developers are commissioned to engineer solutions; they act as conduits between users and builders. To be this conduit, one of the key skills needed by BAs and UX designers is not just communication, but the more subtle skill of translation. Experience shows that even when users are engaged early in design, the vital step of fractionating their feedback into fuel for the builds remains challenging.
During this BoF, we will hone in on concrete ways we can engage with development teams to create user-focussed build processes. We especially want to hear from developers about how they need user-intelligence presented so that it can be channelled into builds. Together, we will seek solutions-oriented ideas for future approaches to platform building, which we aim to develop and publish as a set of guidelines, useful to anyone involved in eResearch projects. These principles will ensure:
* BAs and UX teams understand the informational needs of developers so user-intelligence can be gathered purposefully to bolster building;
* developers hear the particulars of user-needs in language they can ingest, digest and integrate; and
* developers communicate with BAs and UX designers so user-expectations are managed within feasibility limits.
Biography
Keeva Connolly and Dr Farah Zaid Khan are Scientific Business Analysts with the Australian BioCommons. They will be joined by their colleagues, Dr Tiff Nelson (Community Engagement) and Mok (UX Design). All four have been working extensively with bioscience research communities and undertaking programmatic works to engage researchers with platform development and innovation. Dr Kathryn Hall from the Atlas of Living Australia has been managing the team building the Australian Reference Genome Atlas (ARGA) and has worked with the Australian BioCommons to help shape the evolution of ARGA. Together all five will cohost this BoF, which they hope will delve into the key challenges for developers during the build of platforms for researchers.