Ms. Caitlin Ramsay1, Winnie Mok2, Matt Andrews1, Peter Brenton1, Simon Checksfield1, Keeva Connolly2, Christopher Mangion2, Sarah Richmond3, Goran Sterjov1, Nigel Ward2, Kathryn Hall1
1Australian Reference Genome Atlas (ARGA) Project, Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), CSIRO, Australia, 2Australian BioCommons, Australia, 3Bioplatforms Australia, Australia
Biography:
Caitlin is a proud Indigenous woman and recent graduate from UNSW with bachelor’s degrees in bioinformatics engineering and ecological science. Previously she worked as a research assistant in the Wong bioinformatics lab at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, and is now a software engineer at the Atlas of Living Australia where she is helping design and develop the front-end of the Australian Reference Genome Atlas (ARGA). Being new to the web-development industry, she brings a fresh perspective and bioinformatics experience to drive her passion for creating user-friendly tools for researchers, aiming to set new standards for existing solutions. ORCiD: 0009-0000-4168-147X
Mok is a user experience (UX) designer who focuses on accessibility and inclusion at all times. With over 25 years’ worth of experience in design and user research, Mok adopts a human-centred design approach and empowers the whole team to contribute to UX design by setting an open and shared working environment. Mok frequently conducts UX research and collects feedback to provide evidence-based, informed decisions about the user interface for BioCommons services. ORCiD: 0009-0006-1804-9621
Abstract:
Genomic and genetic diversity is an important aspect of biodiversity, and as such, can significantly enhance analyses of biodiversity data by life scientists. Established genomics repositories such as NCBI GenBank, European Nucleotide Archive (EMBL-ENA) and Barcode of Life Systems are often difficult to navigate, presenting a challenging user experience for new users and those researchers unfamiliar to the bioinformatics domain. There is a need for presenting genomic data in a visually pleasing and creative manner to increase the usability of genomic data repositories. The design of the Australian Reference Genome Atlas (ARGA) user interface prioritised intuitive navigation, effectively organising and presenting genomic data through a clean, visually appealing, and minimalist aesthetic.
The concept aimed to empower users to conduct searches based on their preferences, ranging from broad to specific details. A NextJS front-end framework was utilised to implement and organise visually pleasing components into an effective visual hierarchy to ease cognitive load and guide user attention. Thus, allowing users to effortlessly interact with the application and obtain information that is often incomplete and difficult to locate in other genomic repositories, such as taxonomic descriptors and data sources, in a more effective and efficient manner. Here we showcase the User Interface for the ARGA web application (https://app.arga.org.au), which demonstrates our approach to maximising user engagement and usability in genomic data repositories.