Evaluating a Data Portal for Ocean Science
Data portals and repositories are increasingly becoming a central tool in the field of oceanography. As oceanographers increasingly share and integrate datasets from different labs (and across disciplines), such repositories become important sites of collaborative work and interdisciplinary encounters.
User Research
Usability Testing
Diary Studies
Interviews
Surveys
Andrew Neang
Will Sutherland
Ridley Jones
Miaoxin Wang
Visudha Sathurappan
Elif Usta
Charlotte P. Lee
3/2020 —Current
In collaboration with the CMAP design team and HCDE students, we engaged a data exploration tool in the early stages of its development and attempted to evaluate how it might facilitate early-career oceanographers in finding and making sense of unfamiliar data sets. We conducted user studies with oceanography students and researchers with the purpose of making recommendations to the tool’s design team. We also explored how this tool might facilitate data sharing in a large, interdisciplinary collaboration, and explored the assumptions and implications that tools like this carry with them.