RUI: IIS: HCC: Small Projects: Enhancing Genomic Exploration through Reality-Based Interaction

Wellesley College, Wellesley Hills MA

Investigators

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research has generated a broad range of interaction styles that move beyond the desktop into new physical and social contexts. Key areas of innovation in this respect are tabletop, tangible, and embodied user interfaces. These interaction styles leverage users' existing knowledge and skills of interaction with the real non-digital world, thus we refer to them as reality-based interfaces (RBI). RBIs offer a natural, intuitive, and often collaborative form of interaction that reduces the mental effort required to learn and operate a computational system. While these advances in HCI have been successfully applied to a broad range of application domains, little research has been devoted to investigating reality-based interaction in the context of scientific discovery. However, it is particularly important to study reality-based interaction in this context where reducing users' mental workload and supporting collaborative work could lead to new scientific discoveries. The goals of this research are to design, develop, and evaluate the benefits of a tabletop reality-based interface for collaborative exploration of heterogeneous genomic information. The investigation will focus on how tabletop reality-based interaction can support collaborative research and facilitate new discoveries. Specifically, the investigator will address two questions: What is the key computational functionality required to enable an effective use of a tabletop reality-based interface for genomic research? And, can reality-based interface improve users? work flow and facilitate the development of new biological insights? This research program addresses a number of broader impacts. First, successful results of this project will foster collaboration and improve work flow in genomic research, thus, may lead to new scientific discoveries. This investigation will contribute a design, implementation and validation of a tabletop reality-based interface that supports collaborative genomic research, and a set of design requirements for supporting collaborative scientific discovery in areas where vast amounts of heterogeneous information is explored. Second, this project will train undergraduate female researchers, making them an integral part of the research team. Finally, the project will have a significant impact on three computing and science courses in a women?s college.