UX Strategies for Aligning Research Software Teams

User/Developer Experience Webinars feature speakers who highlight best practices and challenges for usable scientific software. Have a suggestion for a future meeting? Use this Google form to propose ideas.

Have you ever been a part of a project where it seems that every stakeholder has a different vision? Or even one stakeholder with multiple visions? Research software is complex on its own but add in real human beings and the process can become even more so. Research software teams are often lean, without dedicated roles like product or project managers (or designers!), leaving engineers to untangle competing priorities. In this session, we’ll explore approaches from UX for translating researcher goals into a shared, user-centered vision for aligning software teams.

Presenter

• Kate Arneson (NCSA)

Organizer

• Johanna (Hannah) Cohoon (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)

Presenter bio

Kate Arneson is a research user interface and experience (UIX) designer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work focuses on applying human-centered design to research software projects, with applications ranging from chemistry and machine learning to genomics and healthcare. Kate collaborates closely with engineers, scientists, and end users to make research software, and the process of building it, better for everyone.

Organizer bio

Johanna (Hannah) Cohoon is a User Experience Researcher at LBNL, seeking to create more rewarding and impactful careers for research software engineers and more efficient and enjoyable experiences for users. She has focused on studying and facilitating open source development, open science practices, and data intensive workflows. Hannah earned her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.