National Microbiome Data Collaborative National Microbiome Data Collaborative

The NMDC will be merging its core, high-performing functionalities directly into DOE-BRIDGE. Please see our FAQs for more information: https://microbiomedata.org/faqs

User Research

The NMDC was shaped by user research and community insights

 

The NMDC’s User Research Process

 

The NMDC employed user-centered design methodology to collect feedback from the scientific community, leading to iterative and ongoing improvement of our products. We acknowledge that we are not aware of all of the pressing data challenges of the microbiome research community and rely on our users to help us identify the most important issues to prioritize. Early and continuous implementation of user feedback ensures that our product initiatives evolve with the changing needs of our user community.

 

Glossary of Terms

Term Definition
Beta-testing Testing of a product to identify any bugs or issues. Direct reporting of these issues to our team helps us troubleshoot and fix them. 
User Centered Design Methodology in which product design and development are driven and refined by the users in an iterative process. 
User Research Methods such as interviews, usability tests, or surveys that allow us to understand user’s attitudes, motivations, or needs. This information helps us identify the most important issues our users face.
Usability Test A session in which a user performs realistic tasks on an interface and provides feedback to a moderator. This helps us understand how well an interface works for the user and identify features that can be changed, implemented, or improved.

 

Community insights shape the NMDC

The NMDC products are designed with and for the scientific community. We have engaged in extensive user research through interviews and direct collaboration with the scientific community that have informed the design and development of the Data Portal, Submission Portal, and previous initiatives including NMDC EDGE and the Field Notes mobile app. Our user interviews have thus far generated 508 insights that have led to key features such as the ability to bulk download data from the Data Portal and changes to the NMDC website and engagement activities.

 

Building community 

One of the NMDC’s primary objectives was to encourage a collaborative, community-centered approach. We built our platforms by incorporating broad perspectives into our user research. For example, a wide range of researchers performing usability testing can help ensure that our product interfaces are accessible and user-friendly across all groups. Community input is crucial for identifying and overcoming barriers to accessing data and computing infrastructures. We welcomed all levels of experience, career stage, educational background, and institution type to participate in user research.

Expectations

Participants in user interviews or usability testing committed to a 45-minute virtual session. Key activities included:

User Research Activities Details Time Commitment
Usability testing Complete a series of tasks within an NMDC product (Submission Portal, Data Portal, or API) that helped our team improve the user interface and features. 45 minute virtual interview
User Interviews Provided insight into your experiences and research needs to help our team develop the NMDC products to address the research community needs 45 minute virtual interview
Beta Testing Test interface or functions newly released on the Portals or API Asynchronous, submit form

Benefits

We value our NMDC community members’ feedback and time. Our user research participants are recognized through a ‘shout-out’ on our main website, along with acknowledgement in NMDC publications. We also provided letters of service upon request. All acknowledgements were optional.

Every piece of feedback that we received helped us to improve our products.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the NMDC community members who have contributed their time and feedback to help us improve:

  • Buck Hanson (2024 Ambassador, Champion)
  • Rachael Storo
  • Olivia Asher
  • Brianna Finley
  • Aaron Robinson (Champion)
  • Brett Youtsey
  • Cassie Ettinger (Champion)
  • Jason Rothman (Champion)
  • Josué Rodríguez-Ramos (Champion, 2023 Ambassador)
  • Justine Macalindong
  • Kevin Myers (Champion, 2021-2022 Ambassador)
  • Sarai Finks (Champion, 2023 Ambassador)
  • Sophia McKever
  • Anders Kiledal (Champion, 2023 Ambassador)
  • Lupita Renteria
  • Brieanne Forbes
  • Nicholas Ward
  • Cristal Zuniga (Champion)
  • Tyler Christian
  • Thomas Pitot (Champion, 2023 Ambassador)
  • Rachel Cohn
  • Cassandra Miller (2025 Ambassador)
  • Joani Viliunas
  • Archana Yadav (Champion, 2023 Ambassador)
  • Nelson Ruth
  • Earl Middlebrook
  • Jiaxian Shen (Champion, 2023 Ambassador)
  • Ying Zhang (Champion)
  • Claudia Weihe
  • Morgan Raimondo
  • Kevin Schaffman
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