TRE Satellite Event notes - User experience in TREs#
Prompts#
How do we design TREs to be as seamless to use as possible?
Who are we designing TREs for?
Are there design principles we can generalise and open source?
Notes#
How do we design TREs to be as seamless to use as possible?
Or - what are the barriers to using TREs?
Unfamiliar - how do we get the tools we’re used to
and expectation: I’ve set up my own machine how I want it, and now I have to change everything?
Over-complication? If you just need Excel can you find it/use it without other things getting in the way?
Extra governance/ethics/etc - researchers have already gone through a lot of approvals; do TREs require extra work?
Education about approval extent - do researchers assume that once they’ve got a TRE they can do anything they want?
Users don’t know what they can do with a TRE - how to communicate that and engage new users
Different users want different things - from just Excel to CLI HPC systems
Even between TREs there are implementation differences; how do we manage the expectations of existing users as well as new?
Perhaps a catalogue - what different TREs are available, what datasets are available, how do you apply for/access/work with them?
Is there mileage in standardising TRE user experience? If you need to register for multiple TREs will you need to learn all of them?
Modularisation of TREs - one infrastructure but multiple options for UI, tooling, data access etc.?
Research in other areas suggests that giving users choice could improve productivity & happiness.
Who are we designing TREs for?
Is this just for researchers? What kind of researchers? What do they want?
If we’re building for NHS staff/clinicians they’re used to (old!) Windows machines
Will our TRE users be comfortable with the UX we provide?
Can we educate our users (researchers) in new ways to approach tasks?
Are there design principles we can generalise and open source?
Actions/next steps#
Explore modular components for building researcher-specified TREs - workspaces, environments, data access, tooling etc.
Training for both CLI and GUI tools is critical to encouraging users to feel confortable in any TRE.
Make sure that datasets (data catalogue), TRE options etc. are all properly published, advertised, quickly accessible and well-described.
central resource for TREs - (trustedresearch.ac.uk?) - publicity, manage a “trusted packages” repository of tools, catalogue all TREs, data catalogues etc?