Problem and Solution
Although technology has allowed many aspects of personal and work life to become easier, there still exist certain areas where technology can still be applied practically. One of those areas is the biological research setting. Researchers currently use a writing tool and a standard laboratory notebook to log experiments and store experimental results. However, we propose that an electronic version of this notebook can offer many advantages to this current standard of keeping track of data. This way, we combine the notebook, and other loose leaf pages that comprise a researcher’s notebook and data. Organization, practicality, and efficiency can be greatly improved. By having things in electronic form, industry can impose standardized forms for all their researchers to follow so that others within the company can read other people’s notes. While researchers are comfortable with the current standard pen and laboratory notebook, they often do things to try to make their notes more readable for others to be able to read. For example, excel sheets of different tables are often xeroxed and pasted into their notebook to provide a generic and readable table to read from. By creating an electronic version of this notebook, we can eliminate many of the unnecessary tasks that people often use to make their notebooks more structured and readable and provide other convenient features that would greatly reduce the paper work involved in their research. This ideally should not only facilitate research in general but should also allow other people such as principle investigators to make more sense of their graduate and post-doctorates’ notebooks when they review them.
Contextual Inquiry interview Descriptions and Results
The target users were chosen because a lot of structure and organization can be imposed on the workbook of a researcher to make it much more readable and understandable. Other web applications have made attempts at creating these types of applications but those applications have been poorly made and are not used (as far as we can tell) indicating their lack of user friendliness. Furthermore because researchers each have their own unique system of recording and storing information, it would be good to somewhat standardize the way information is stored so that other people can also look at someone’s notebook and be able to extract valuable information from it. This would also help if someone were leaving the lab and the PI wanted to keep a copy of his/her graduate student’s work so that it could be referenced in the future. An electronic copy of the student’s notebook could be created easily and given to the PI.
Interviewees: all interview were done in the Cory Goodman Lab in LSA on campus
For general background, the Goodman lab works with the Drosophila Fly and many of the lab members are involved in fly genetics which involves fly crosses and fly maintenance.
(1) Julie: fifth year neurobiology graduate student who just received her Ph.D and will be doing a post-doctorate starting next year. As an apprentice, I observed her maintain fly stocks and make different crosses between different stocks that she and the lab had. She records her fly crosses either in her lab notebook or on separate sheets of paper. Her fly crosses look like multiplication problems such as
She will jot down notes and other things next to her crosses. She is well organized and is a good representation of what the lab does in general. Though there was not anything particularly unique about this, she brought up the point that she would like to be able to go through all her notebooks and find with relative ease, experiments that involved a particular procedure or a particular fly stock.
(2) Cynthia: an undergraduate who has worked under one of the post-doctorates in the lab for the past half year or so. As I was there, she mainly performed PCR and cloning experiments where she would isolate different pieces of DNA, place them into appropriate vectors, place those vectors into backeria and grow those bacteria and eventually either collect that DNA or express a particular protein. I observed her mainly setting up PCR experiments and recording her results and data within her notebook. For her notebook, she has sheets of paper that she has cut out which are templates for her PCR experiments. Once she pastes in those generic copies of into her lab notebook, she writes in the values in the table and then moves on. She also pastes many pictures of gels and copies of vectors and restriction sites into her notebook. Though she has become quite accustomed to this type of organization within her notebook, note everyone does it and it does take extra time and effort to make the copies and cut and paste them into her notebook. By having these types of features electronically available, other people can also utilize these tools and it would save some time and effort on the part of the researcher. (As a side note:) Ideally, pictures will be taken with digital cameras and can be taken in directly from the computer but there is not an easy means to transfer pictures of restriction sites and vectors to text.
(3) Dan: A second year neurobiology student who finished his rotations last year and has been working with Julie on his own project. While working with his flies, he often has to set up crosses and check up on his flies periodically. He essentially performs the same types of experiments that Julie performs. However, occasionally there are experiments that he forgets to check up on and because he does not remember to check up on them. When I was there, he would often be flipping stocks or would be checking up on a cross that he had set up the previous week and then while locating those stocks within his trays of flies, he would find a vial that he had forgotten about a week or two before that he was supposed to have checked up on. For him, one of the greatest conveniences would be to have reminders that he could use so that he wouldn’t forget those types of things. His method of organizing things relies heavily on him keeping mental notes of things. He will make notes of things that he will need to check up on in his notebook but he doesn’t go back to those old pages and look for those old reminders that he leaves. Furthermore, after viewing his note book, I also realized that his writing is somewhat messy (it looks like chicken scratch). By having things typed and electronic, it would be easier to read and understand. Plus with electronic reminders, while he’s writing in his notebook (which he does everyday), the reminders would come up to him regardless of which page he was on.
(4) Hai-Lan: A third or fourth year neurobiology graduate student who will be receiving her Ph.D within the next year or so. She is the messiest of all the people that I interviewed. Papers and notebooks were strewn across her lab bench. It was very difficult to follow what she was doing. But somehow amongst her papers, she had her own system of operating. She did however, have a good method of planning out her experiments. She would have a week planned out on a piece of paper attached to a clip board so that she could write out which experiments that she planned to do each and what to do each day. She also has some undergraduates working for her and they can often just look at the week’s tasks and do what needs to be done on a particular day. This particular idea seems good because Julie also pointed out that having a timeline type of organizer would help to plan out crosses and experiments.
Some common themes in the notebooks has been the organization involved in the notebooks. Everyone seems to organize it by day. For each day that they come into lab, they record what they do for each experiment. The result is a laboratory notebook that has multiple experiments throughout it that are all intertwined with each other sharing pages here and there. Reminders also seems to be a big help to people. In this fly lab, everyone needs to keep track of their stocks of flies and need reminders to check up on different stocks or reminders to check up on crosses several days after they’ve set up.
Task Analysis Questions
Who is going to use the system?
Biology researchers (e.g. graduate students, post-doctorates, laboratory technicians)
What tasks do they perform?
They perform experiments and record those experiments and their results into notebooks and binders in an often unorganized way.
What tasks are desired?
Sample tasks: Writing in experiments and results throughout a typical day, search for old experiments, grouping old experiments, create and use simple templates, create links between pages so that different parts of different experiments can be easily referenced, timers and reminders, time & date stamp on everything done, notes area,
How are the tasks learned?
The tasks are learned through people performing experiments and each person developing their own method of organizing all their notes and data.
Where are the tasks performed?
Tasks performed are essentially the same as the tasks desired with the exception of certain conveniences such as searching for old experiments, grouping old experiments, reminders and timers,
What’s the relationship between user and data?
The relationship is that the user generates their own data and wants it to be in an organized manner so that they can make sense of and find their work years from when they performed the experiments
What other tools does the user have?
Notebook, pen, pencil, scissors, xeroxed templates, photographs, an organizational scheme unique to every user
How do users communicate with each other?
Users communicate their results and experiments to each other by verbally describing them, xeroxing their notebooks or rewriting sections of their notebooks to make it more readable.
How often are the tasks performed?
Tasks are performed manually where the researcher writes in data and pastes in tables and pictures where organization can often become complicated when there are multiple notebooks and experiments being used simultaneously. These tasks are all performed quite frequently on a daily basis.
What are the time constraints on the tasks?
Constraints on the tasks are that organization must be easy and intuitive for the user to navigate and that things must be as intuitive and easy as their own unique ways of doing things.
What happens when things go wrong?
If things go wrong, the researcher’s results can potentially be really mixed up which is a serious detriment to their work and research in general. Though no one’s life is endangered or is at stake, it would be extremely frustrating to the user if something bad happened to their data and experiments.
Analysis of new and existing tasks
Record Simple Text Notes (moderate)
Generate task list
Write on separate sheet of paper tasks to accomplish
Obtain laboratory notebook
Open notebook to most recently written page
On next open space/page, write date
Write experiment name/description
Write down protocol name
Describe briefly what part of the experiment will be done (ex. Set up fly crosses)
Bookmark notebook and close it
Bring notebook to fly room
Bring out fly cages
Obtain two cages
Observe flies under microscope
Count # of males/females
Open Notebook
Record # of males/females
Make note in notebook when to check up on progeny
Write on separate sheet of paper the note to check up on progeny
Record Chart for PCR (difficult)
Obtain laboratory notebook
Open to page where PCR experimental notes are being taken
Write down which primers are being made
Write down purpose of PCR experiment
Xerox generic chart for PCR run
Cut out chart
Paste chart into notebook
Write in chart amount of each part of mixture to be used
Primers, dNTPs, buffer, ddH2O
Write in notebook # of cycles to be run and annealing temperature
Obtain primers, dNTPs,, Enzyme, buffer, and water
Make master mix
Set up each run (i.e. prepare each tube)
Place tubes in PCR machine
Observe how long run will take
Write/Make a reminder (simple)
Obtain weekly/month calendar
Write down in five days to check up on progeny of cross XXXX
Place calendar back on desk
Record/Perform/Modify Protocol (moderate)
Obtain notebook
Obtain binder with protocols
Locate protocol that will be used (staining)
Take protocol out of binder
Place protocol next to notebook
Open notebook to page where experiment will be recorded
Write down date
Write down which protocol using
Write down which specific cross the stain will be made for
Perform steps 1- 8 of antibody staining protocol
Make note in notebook
Will leave embryos overnight and continue staining tomorrow
i.e. slight modification/alternative to normal protocol
Place protocol back in binder and put binder away
Close notebook
Set up timer (simple)
Obtain notebook
Obtain binder with protocols
Locate protocol that will be used (staining)
Take protocol out of binder
Place protocol next to notebook
Perform steps 1-4 of the protocol
Step 4 will require a 2 hour incubation
At the end of step 4
Locate timer
Set timer for two hours
Leave station to perform other tasks (e.g. get something to eat or do other experiment)
Search through old notes (difficult)
Recall which experiment to look up
Go to bookshelf/desk
Search through different binders/notebooks if unable to think of exact book
Locate notebook
Take out notebook