Incorporating human experiences into the design process of a visualization tool: A case study from bioinformatics

Visualization tools are helpful in the analysis of large and complex information such as genomics data and biological phenomena. However, there exists a conceptual gap between how the tools actually work and the user experiences, tasks and behaviors. To design more human-centered tools that fully support the biologist´s experiences, we have defined a framework, called UX-P (user experiences to patterns). The framework leverages the complicity of personas, a technique to capture user experiences, and design patterns - allowing us to narrow the gap between user experiences and the tool´s design and features. First, HCI experts need to capture the user´s needs, interaction behavior and task flow. This information can then be used to derive design patterns which are composed to create a conceptual design. To test and further improve this framework, we carried out an empirical study with users of a bioinformatics visualization tool called protein explorer. Results of our empirical study will be presented.