Accessibility of environmental data for sharing: The role of UX in large cyberinfrastructure projects

Incorporating user experience (UX) testing when creating research cyberinfrastructure is often overlooked, but if left too late, the cost of retrofitting is considerable, and the very clients the cyberinfrastructure was built to serve may be lost. Successfully integrating UX testing into the product development cycle can be difficult but rewarding. This paper describes how UX evaluations were incorporated over ten years of operation of DataONE (www.dataone.org), a multi-sector science research cyberinfrastructure project created to support the discovery, access, and sustainability of data about life on Earth and the environment that sustains it. The diverse stakeholders in DataONE include data creators and users such as researchers and government workers across the broad scope of the earth and environmental sciences as well as those who hold and manage data such as libraries and data repositories. Between 2009 and 2019 DataONE members designed and constructed data management tools and services to fulfill the DataONE objectives. To assist in achieving its goals, a participatory design approach was used by establishing several largely volunteer and stakeholder-representative working groups, including the Usability and Assessment Working Group. This Working Group conducted over forty UX evaluations to assess the usability of DataONE products and websites at various stages of the development process. In addition to improving the usability of DataONE products, the UX evaluations fostered community involvement by building trust and engagement with the products being developed. The DataONE UX experience yields several important lessons which will improve the success of other projects. It is our conclusion that UX testing should be a mandatory part of the design of any cyberinfrastructure project.