The 'embedding e-science applications' project addressed the difficulty of managing requirements for usability in e-science projects, and developing collaborative approaches to system development that allow for communication of these requirements.

Overview

Our project examines communication and collaboration practices in e-science in the context of growing scale, increasing complexity and distributed nature of e-science teams. We seek to understand the critical challenges and opportunities to the uptake of new e-Science technologies and the newly emerging work practices related to the use of these technologies.

Our project has two components.

  • The first one comprises ethnographies of several e-science projects (IB, OMII, CARMEN,and PRAGMA) focusing on management and organisational practices that may impact on designing for usability. This is conducted by Dr Dimtrina Spencer, a social anthropologist.
  • The second component of the project is a doctoral project conducted by Grace de la Flor who aims to identify, develop and evaluate existing and novel design techniques.

The rest of the members on our interdisciplinary team, Dr Marina Jirotka, Sharon Lloyd, Professor Anne Trefethen, Dr Andrew Warr, Dr Ralph Shroeder, Mustafizur Rahman and Professor Monica Shafarel contribute with further case studies, expertise and insights from their extensive experience in e-science or related fields.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)Oxford e-Research Centre (OeRC)Oxford University Computing Laboratory (OUCL)

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