https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2105-14-103 Matos, Paula de, Jennifer A. Cham, Hong Cao, Rafael Alcántara, Francis Rowland, Rodrigo Lopez, and Christoph Steinbeck. 2013. “The Enzyme Portal: A Case Study in Applying User-Centred Design Methods in Bioinformatics.” BMC Bioinformatics 14 (March): 103.

This article looks to approach things from the same direction I am inclined to: looking at the background of usability and making it clear that in general within bioinformatics, usability is lacking, with several useful citations leading to locations where others have identified the same problem.

I could have quoted almost every section of the “background” in this paper, as it’s so useful. It takes into account the varying level of skills between computational biologists / bioinformaticians and wet lab scientists.

Personas: interview people who fit into personas to ensure they fit correctly, ensured they had entry and exit criteria that satisfied each persona.

They used a group workshop to discuss and identify needs in the enzyme portal, with mix of researchers, pis, phd students, etc.

paper prototype testing was followed by iterative interactive prototypes

at the end they reported specific findings about the enzyme portal, rather than generalised methods.

Overall: really good article, early stages should be cited and used as inspiration for any of my related usability related papers.