Understanding Comparative Genomics Data Visualization for Biodiversity Domain Through Persona-Based Interviews

Understanding the needs of genomic data visualization techniques is important to help bioinformaticians to perform their comparative analytical tasks effectively. DNA sequencing datasets consist of a long sequential string of nucleotide base pairs combination and are often involved in multiple sequences alignment for comparative analysis. Therefore, existing challenges include designing suitable visualization layout and the need of user-centered approach to ensure optimal user experience. Existing works also featured heavily on the qualitative evaluation of comparative visualization tools, such as use cases and case studies, which are difficult to quantify and conduct follow up evaluation for tool improvement. Hence, this paper aims to understand the needs of visualization tools in comparative genomic analysis to identify visualization tasks and visual design requirements. The methodology includes the creation of semi-structured interview based on personas template as guiding questions and the synthesis of thematic analysis results. These results presented the requirements of the visualization tasks for the biodiversity domain based on comparative targets. For future work, this research will design, develop, and validate the comparative visualization tool based on the discovered requirements.