Usability and Usefulness in Bioinformatics: Evaluating a Tool for Querying and Analyzing Protein Interactions Based on Scientists' Actual Research Questions

Usability testing for bioinformatics tools rarely assesses user performance for scientists' real world, complex analyses. This article discusses findings from a user performance test in which scientists queried a protein-protein interaction tool and selected items of interest from search results for further analysis. Findings reveal scientists' criteria for making their selective judgments, the content they required for judging search results by these criteria, and the arrangements of content and program interactivity that would facilitate their judgments. For usefulness, findings show how tool designs must accord in content, arrangement, and interactivity with scientists' goals criteria, and ways of knowing.