Background and Objectives

Scientific and Research Open Source Software (SROSS) is a unique sector of OSS. There’s a plethora of open projects and software created by researchers and scientists over years. The unique aspects of these projects are the ecosystem of the institutions that house, encourage, fund and grow this particular kind of OSS. They have specific established ways that growth is valued historically and that largely means that usability, user experience and design is de-prioritised.

This project aimed to research and understand the current challenges of scientific and research open source software creators/maintainers across all aspects of OSS maintenance. We investigated the systemic and cultural barriers to usability work in S&ROSS and made detailed reflections and suggestions on how this can be improved across the S&ROSS ecosystem.

Impact

We found that simply by performing this research we had a posutive impact on S&ROSS projects. By offeringa. space to speak about their challenges and finding that mutual reflection space the projects were able to better engage with and understand what usability and design of essential Science and Research tools meant to them as a project but also science and research as a wider field that impacts and improves human existence.

We were also able to create several directly relevant resources across the project including informational zines about key terminology in both design and usability as well as science and research, a sample cirriculum, an ecosystem map, a design ‘readiness’ matrix and a detailed report reflecting on the key reserach questions with comments and insights from our own usability and design experts.

This research also included several, hand-on workshops and visits to institutions and teams in order to work through sample material with them.

Outputs

  • https://user-project.superbloom.design/
  • https://user-project.superbloom.design/about/ecosystem-map/
  • https://user-project.superbloom.design/about/rubric/
  • https://user-project.superbloom.design/about/zines/
  • https://user-project.superbloom.design/about/design-curriculum/
  • A series of workshops on usability, design and UX/UI work

New skills

This was a large scale research project across multiple subjects and with 5+ team members. My new skills were around team management across a complex research project as well as plenty of specific domain knowledge growth in science and research.


The USER website with our complete research report

The USER Zines explaining complex terms

Diagrams created for Zines

Workshop activities