NIH NCBI SARS-CoV-2 Dashboard | Empowering Researchers to Share Findings and Collaborate During the Pandemic

NCBI Virus SARS-CoV-2 Dashboard: Visualization of genomic data related to samples collected for the SARS-Cov-2 genome to enable discovery of data for download and analysis, for NIH NCBI Virus.

1/2020-07-2021, ICF supporting NIH NCBI Virus, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/virus/vssi/#/sars-cov-2

Project Summary | My Role | Highlights

From top row left to right: 1 The live SARS-CoV-2 Dashboard. 2 & 3 Stills capturing the filter interaction which highlights selected data and provides a quick method to remove filters, 4. The mobile presentation of the dashboard. 5. The NCBI Highlights article announcing the launch of the Dashboard. (bottom row) 6 Annotated wireframes proposing the “data hub” functionality to organize all information related to a single virus. 7 A sample of a persona after my research, and 7 the full updated persona set. 8 A mural board to elicit Analytics for the dashboard. The team discussed and documented desired outcome measures then listed the application elements that could be measured to indicate level of success or engagement. 9 Summary slide from the initial User Testing report.

Project Summary

This effort began as a face-lift for the existing Virus site and dashboard, however with the advent of SARs-CoV-2 the team pivoted to create a dashboard for the virus that could be reused and repurposed for any future virus. The goal of the dashboard was to support scientists and public health officials in understanding what data was available and help them target data-sets for download and analysis. It also served to organize different resources around a single virus, such as data-sets for download, phylogenic trees, taxonomies, mutation sets, and related pub-med articles and blast data.

My Role

  • I served as a user-experience designer and researcher; analyzing the data to understand what it contained, how data elements were related, and what types of visualizations were possible and aligning that with user needs.
  • I conducted problem analysis through the interviewing of scientists and public health officials.
  • I created the conceptual designs and worked with a graphic designer to evolve them.
  • I facilitated design sessions with the team and supported created of acceptance criteria.
  • I supported the Product Owner in the strategy and planning of development tasks.
  • I worked closely with the developers to review progress and test the functionality.
  • I tested prototypes with users and integrated that feedback into the designs.
  • I updated and enhanced a proto-persona set to capture what we learned during user research.

Highlights

  • Usage of the site rose from 10,000 users per year to 250,000 downloads during the summer months of 2020.
  • I designed the Data Hub for reuse and promoted the idea within the team. In future, the Data Hub could can be repurposed to dynamically organize other Virus Variation Resources such as influenza, dengue, and zika. Today these resources are managed as a series of static pages that are difficult to navigate and maintain.

Work Cited