Who We Are, in no particular order:
- Michael Maddox
- Avanti Shrikumar
- Sumaiya Nazeen
...
- Feels that published protocols do not contain all the necessary details
- Would like a way to easily share protocols and related notes within the lab as well as with collaborators
- Finds common tasks on a Unix terminal very difficult due to a lack of learnability of commands and command-line options
- Typically resorts to outside sources such as Google for documentation since it is easier to find usage examples
- Confusions such as “-l” with “-1” can occur, so they must be avoided from a programmer standpoint.
User Classes
Based on our interviews, we identified the following two user classes:
- Biologists
- Most of their day-to-day work involves performing experiments in a wet lab
- They often need computational support for analyzing their experimental results
- Generally not comfortable with using a command-line interface
- Most of their detailed notes are kept in a lab notebook, not on the computer
- Computational biologists
- They are typically computer scientists by training
- Typically have a basic knowledge of biology, but often need help from biologists to interpret biological significance of results
- Their work often involves writing scripts for analyzing biological data, but they do not have the resources to take the time to create user-friendly programs