Ten Principles for Creating Usable Software for Science

Abstract

The volume and variety of scientific data being generated at experimental facilities requires the seamless interaction of the scientist's knowledge with the large-scale machines and software that is required to process the data. In the last few years, scientific software tools are being developed to address these increasingly complex workflow and data management needs. However, current approaches for designing systems and tools focus on the hardware and software of the machine and do not consider the user. Our experience shows us that user experience research needs to be tightly integrated with the software development life cycle for building sustainable software for science. It has become not just necessary, but critical, to consider the user interaction in the design of the entire system for data-intensive sciences that have complex human interaction with the data, software and systems. The dynamic nature of science projects and the complex roles of personnel in the projects makes it difficult to apply classical user research methodologies from industry. In this paper, we make three specific contributions towards improving the usability and sustainability of scientific software. First, we examine the software life cycle in science environments and identify the differences with commercial software development. Next, we outline ten principles we have developed to guide user engagement and software development and illustrate it with examples from our projects over the last several years. Finally, we provide guidelines to other eScience projects on applying the ten principles in the software development life cycle.

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