Cybershuttle
TL;DR: Biophysicists in universities, currently use different platforms to complete their research work, and have the added responsibility of managing their team; Cybershuttle is a platform that brings their research work under one hood, and gives them the ability to manage their team in an organized fashion.
Overview
Duration
3 months
Team members
2 UX Designers, 3 Developers, Project Lead
Key responsibilities
UX Research & Design
Right from research work, all the way to getting simulation results, biophysicists go through a lot of hurdles.
Inefficient Team Management
The biophysicists at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (UIUC) faced challenges in effective management due to the absence of a suitable interface for team management.
Inefficient Simulation Workflow
Inefficient resource utilization
How might we improve the workflow of biophysicists, to alleviate their management, collaboration and functional concerns?
Design Process
But to improve their workflow, it was important for us to understand it in order to relate to their research hurdles.
Structure Data Preparation
Simulation Setup
Simulation Input Files
Run Simulation
Visualization & Analysis
It was now easier to understand what the biophysicists are dealing with. To make their workflow better, we interviewed them to gain actionable insights.
Diego
I want to oversee my team's projects, check our progress, and help solve any issues we encounter.
Mariano
I struggle with managing and analyzing simulation results because I have to switch between different softwares and hardware.
Diego
Running a simulation has a lot of challenges, you have to select the appropriate software and hardware.
Although these were the core challenges, there were many complex requirements to consider for the design of Cybershuttle.
We did some visual research with respect to the keywords above, to get inspiration for the Cybershuttle platform.
Through interviews and clustering, we extracted keywords required for identifying features important for Cybershuttle.
Team Management
Management of simulations
Monitoring of experiments
Visualization of molecules
Integration between PC and Supercomputers
File Management
Project Management
Scientists can manage their groups and projects under them through this interface.
By accessing groups, scientists get an overview of the members involved, and can remove or add them.
Scientists can check and monitor all their simulations, project wise
Scientists can view all the details with respect to each simulation in their Job Monitor.
Scientists can check the resource allocation of supercomputers through this interface.
The completion of visual research paved the way for the creation and design of low-fidelity wireframes.
The low-fidelity designs were further developed into high-fidelity screens, with the help of a defined design system.
A comprehensive system for easy management of projects
A unified view of all projects, project managers and the status of each project, facilitating effortless project management.
Seamless interaction between PC and supercomputers.
A simple and easy to use interface for biophysicists to upload simulation files directly from their personal computers to supercomputers.
A comprehensive system for easy management of projects
A unified view of all projects, project managers and the status of each project, facilitating effortless project management.
A bird’s view on resource usage
A concise view of storage and compute units used by all team members.
Reflections
01.
Grasping and understanding scientific domain knowledge was a bit challenging at first, and there were a lot of grey areas in this process.
02.
The requirements of this project detailed a vast amount of information to be shown in the user interface, which made it important to craft a seamless user experience.
03.
Creating an easy to use navigation system by designing a site map was effective in establishing the flow of the Cybershuttle platform.
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