2019 ESIP Winter Meeting

Session Description:
Are you providing data services? Do you know what your users would say about using your services? If you answer yes to the first question but no to the second, you will want to join this session!

At the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a new suite of data system tools is being developed and collectively called the NCAR Digital Asset Services Hub (DASH). It is crucial that the DASH services help the users in achieving their data goals regardless of whether or not they are familiar with data repositories. Additionally, it is vital that the user interactions are friendly and intuitive, so that the users will not mind coming back!

During this session, the attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the techniques that can be applied to a data repository, see evaluation examples and results from DASH, and practice how to evaluate the usefulness of a data repository by using the newly created DASH Repository as the test case.

Session Takeaways (post meeting):
1) Usability is generally important to making useful software, especially in the sciences, and it is extensively oriented around testing with individuals.
2) Key technique for usability testing: Heuristic Evaluation (evaluating software against standard design principles). This technique can be very helpful when testing interfaces mid-development. Demonstratively effective with NCAR/UCAR DASH as use case.
3) Usability is a unique problem from a developer standpoint. Developers are balancing a lot of disparate interests but we can get developers working on the side of usability by talking to developers.