Data Search Useability Whitepaper

[mishaschwartz]

We would like to produce a whitepaper that describes how climate researchers and students (users) are currently searching for and discovering climate data. This paper should also suggest improvements to currently used search mechanisms in order to improve the user experience when searching for climate data.

A secondary goal of this whitepaper is to provide a roadmap for improving the search interface for the Marble software (marbleclimate.com).

This whitepaper should include (or be accompanied by):

• current user workflows when searching for climate data
• suggested improvements to current workflows
• an overview of the feasibility and requirements to implement the suggested improvements
• a mockup/wireframe of a search interface that implements the improvements described above

If time permits, we can also implement the improved search interface as code and ask users to test it out and provide feedback.
At the very least we should present the whitepaper and wireframe at the bi-weekly DACCS executive committee meeting for feedback.

Some notes on implementation:

• if the wireframe does not differ too much from the STAC-browser interface, then we can make changes directly to the STAC-browser source code (https://github.com/radiantearth/stac-browser)
• if the wireframe is significantly different, we may want to create our own interface from scratch. However it must use a STAC catalog as a backend and we should ensure that it can use both the API or catalog (json file) backends.

Participants/Roles:

• Shruti Katkar: UX research, conduct user interviews, wireframe design
• Steve Easterbrook: consult on feasibility and implementation
• Alexander Yu: consult on implementation, UI development
• Student (TBD): consult on feasibility and implementation, assist Alex with UI development

Deliverables (in priority order):

1. whitepaper
2. wireframe
3. UI implementation