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biocore / my-microbes

A set of tools for delivering personal microbiome results to individuals participating in microbiome sequencing studies.
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Improve general accessibility of system #76

Closed jairideout closed 11 years ago

jairideout commented 11 years ago

From Holly Menninger:

"I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to make complex ideas digestible for the general public. We've been working on a similar challenge as you all with our home microbiome data - ie., How much information so we share? In what form? So it's with that lens that I took a look at your site.

At first glance, I'm struck by the scientific terminology on the tabs on front page - Rarefaction, Alpha vs. beta diversity, OTUs, taxonomic, boxplots - I know these are words our general audience would not know or be familiar with. Are you planning on this system being for a general audience or for a technical audience (frankly, I'm not convinced an undergrad would know OTU or the difference between alpha/beta diversity)?

I would consider renaming those tabs with plainer language or even questions - e.g.Who lives on you? How do the microbes on your different body parts compare to each other? How do the microbes on your body compare other college students? Do your body microbes change through time? You start to do this after a chunk of text in each tab, but not at the outset.

As I read through it, it seems like you are giving students problem sets or homework to do with the data. Will they be using this data in class? Or is this just an "FYI: here are your results." If it's a latter, than I think you need to be straightforward with plain language bullet points - You may get a few who want to play around with the data, but I bet you'll lose a bunch if they need to make multiple clicks to see results.

I'd also remind the students on the front page exactly what they did - How many body samples over how long of a period of time.

I'd be mindful of labeling axes and taxonomic hierarchies in legend tables - again, I don't think those plots will be intuitive for students to interpret.

For our own work, I've struggled with how do we give our participants access to meaning beyond just the names and abundance - ie, why is it interesting that phylum A is so abundant? Is there a way to link to some natural history information about taxa?"

gregcaporaso commented 11 years ago

Broken out into issues #77, #78, #79, #80.