Motivation for User Experience in Science Software
The user experience and sustainability of scientific software are pressing challenges since these foundational products impact the production of knowledge and scientific progress.
Iterative scientific inquiry results in constantly evolving user needs.
Software sustainability & efficiency requires regular UX investment.
Science projects often lack UX processes & best practices.
Commercial software practices require translation to science contexts.
Our Vision
STRUDEL is supporting scientific software development, and the growing science software UX community, through advocacy and the stewardship of key products. We aim to make adopting UX in science easier and more effective from project planning through product development.
Funding
STRUDEL is generously funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Liz Vu & Josh Greenberg Program Officers, initial grant #10074.
Project History
The STRUDEL project emerged from the experiences of members in Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's computing sciences applying UX to scientific software products.
STRUDEL Design System v1.0 — Winter 2024
STRUDEL launched the initial version of a design system oriented around Task Flows, including visual design templates, guidelines, and code.
Formation of US-RSE UX Working Group – Nov 2023
STRUDEL shepherded the formation of a working group dedicated to UX within the US-RSE organization to help bring together UXers across science communities.
Construction of initial Design System — Summer - Fall 2023
Task Flows were implemented in visual templates and code that can be downloaded and used as a starting point for scientific applications.
Characterization of initial sociotechnical typology — Spring - Summer 2023
STRUDEL team organized elements of surveyed projects & sociotechnical literature to identify key questions and concepts shaping scientific software development work.
Conceptualization & design of Task Flows — Winter - Spring 2023
STRUDEL team generalized common patterns uncovered during the audit to generate Task Flows which can be used across different science domains and use cases.
Audit & survey of DOE-funded science software UIs – Fall 2022 - Winter 2023
STRUDEL team gathered and documented screenshots and artifacts from several DOE funded product’s UIs and conducted interviews with software teams to identify common patterns.
STRUDEL project founded — 2022
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded the team at LBNL to create a typology and design system for scientific software after team participated in a DOE workshop on the Science of Scientific Software Development and Use.
“Experiences with a Flexible User Research Process to Build Data Change Tools” paper — Sept 2020
Team members published experiences with adopting a flexible UX research process to influence scientific software development to raise awareness of user experience challenges.
“Ten Principles for Creating Usable Software for Science” paper - Oct 2017
Data Science & Technology group leaders published eScience conference paper outlining core principles for building usable science software based on team’s experiences.
Experiences applying user centered design to workflow APIs paper — 2014
Team published experiences applying user centered design practices to scientific workflow API development.
UX research & design across projects to create usable data abstractions, APIs, and more – 2013 - 2020
Initial application of user centered design in LBNL projects - 2006 - 2012
Teams in Data Science & Technology Department (now Scientific Data Division) began adopting user centered design practices when building scientific software.