Steven Entezari

Why and how is HCI relevant for Bioinformatics?

Bioinformaticians are at the intersection of translational research within the domains of technology and medicine. Their unique set of knowledge and skills in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting biological data provides insights into a corner of human life-sciences that would otherwise be impalpable to the naked eye. Human Computer Interaction emphasizes the importance of a pleasant and fruitful end-user experience with technologies that incorporate themselves as ubiquitous partners in the users completion of a task. Careful understanding of computer science, psychology, design, and many other fields allow for greater understandings of user-interaction phenomenon as well as interpretation of users behavior to design usable interfaces. The relevance of HCI within the domain of Bioinformatics is anchored within the translation of profuse amounts of data into human-readable information. Within this abundance of data, emergent patterns, trends, and properties of systems can be exposed when given the right medium. Certain cognitive parameters exist within human consciousness which must be taken into account when developing systems that display vast amounts of data. Cognitive overload is a psychological hindrance of human cognition that produces decreased performance due to the exposure of more information than the brain can process. HCI principles within the domain of Bioinformatics can help alleviate this by introducing information in a manner that does not induce episodes of cognitive overload. Interfaces that present the requested information without inducing hindrances, such as cognitive overload, can be designed and tested for practical use. Another method of this would be the identification and analysis of the most useful and natural presentation style of information. Absorption of the displayed information can be facilitated by representing that information through the most appropriate senses. Massive amounts of data, such as those within bioinformatic databases, can be presented with information-visualization techniques while more basic information can simply be presented textually . HCI is also extremely relevant when dealing with multiple iterations of a complex task. In the case of Bioinformatics, HCI principles could be applied to gain a better understanding of biological entities with computer-generated variations. For instance, the outcomes of many different protein-protein interactions could be calculated, then the most fruitful ones could be simulated to observe and collect data on in a manner that would never be possible in human beings. In a sense, it would be treating computers as pseudo-biological agents. Obviously, HCI is extremely relevant within the Bioinformatics domain. Principles and methods that have been universally proven across many other domains can help make bioinformatic user-experiences richer and more fruitful. Also, new domain-oriented design principles can be employed to better understand phenomenon not observable to the human mind.