Where are we going and how are we going to get there?

?

1. GPS Technology2. The Sony Walkman3. The Bar code4. TV Dinners5. PlayStation6. Social Networking7. Text messages8. Electronic Money9. Microwaves10. Trainers

Top 10 'inventions' that changed the world

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/4981964/Top-10-inventions-that-changed-the-world.html

JISC Accredited Trainers Scheme?

linkeddata.org

His friends and colleagues

Literature

ImagesLogBook

Software

Presentations

Data (files, spreadsheets)

Compute resource

Backup and Archive

Thanks to Carole Goble

Duncan’s Research EnvironmentDuncan’s Research Environment

“There are these great collaboration tools that 12-year-olds are using. It’s all back to front.”

Robert Stevens

scientists

LocalWeb

Repositories

Graduate Students

Undergraduate Students

Virtual Learning Environment

Technical Reports

Reprints

Peer-Reviewed Journal &

Conference Papers

Preprints &

Metadata

Certified Experimental

Results & Analyses

experimentation

Data, Metadata, Provenance, Scripts, Workflows, Services,Ontologies, Blogs, ...

Digital Libraries

The social process of Science 1.02.0

Next Generation Researchers

Thanks to Simon Coles

We want research to be:

1.Replayable – go back and see what happened2.Repeatable – run the experiment again3.Reproducible – new expt to reproduce results4.Reusable – use as part of new experiments5.Repurposeable – reuse the pieces in new expt6.Replicatable – for scale and automation7.Reliable – systematic, unbiased and robust

My Seven RsMy Seven Rs

How do we move from heroic scientists doing heroic science with heroic infrastructure to everyday scientists doing science they couldn’t do before?humanists

archaeologistsgeographersmusicologists...researchers!

research

It’s the democratisation of e-Science!

“A biologist would rather share their toothbrush than their gene name”

Mike Ashburner and othersProfessor Genetics,

University of Cambridge, UK

“Data mining: my data’s mine and your data’s mine”

Thanks to Carole Goble

Nopedestrians

You’re letting

theoiksin!

You’re letting

themuggle

sin!

Nomuggles

Web 2

Open Repositories

Researchers

Social Network

The experiment that is

mySpace for scientists!Facebook for scientists!Not Facebook for scientists!

“Facebook for Scientists” ...but different to Facebook!

A repository of research methods (an SGDL?)

A community social network of people and things

A Social Virtual Research Environment

Open source (BSD) Ruby on Rails application with HTML, REST and SPARQL interfaces

Project started March 2007

Closed beta July 2007

Open beta November 2007

myExperiment currently has 1800 registered users, 150 groups, 700 workflows, 200 files and 60 packs.Go to www.myexperiment.org to access publicly available content or create an account.

User Profiles Groups Friends Sharing Tags Workflows Developer interface Credits and Attributions Fine control over privacy Packs Federation Enactment

myExperiment FeaturesmyExperiment FeaturesD

istin

ctiv

es

• Of the 661 workflows, 531 are publicly visible whereas 502 are publicly downloadable.

• 3% of the workflows with restricted access are entirely private to the contributor and for the remaining they elected to share with individual users and groups.

• 69 workflows (over 10%) have been shared, with the owner granting edit permissions to specific users and groups.

• In addition there are 52 instances where users have noted that a workflow is based on another workflow on the site.

• The most viewed workflow has 1566 views.• There are 50 packs, ranging from tutorial examples to

bundles of materials relating to specific experiments.

C

Scientists do share! Scientists do share! Consumers > Curators > Producers

1. Fit in, Don’t Force Change2. Jam today and more jam

tomorrow

3. Just in Time and Just Enough

4. Act Local, think Global 5. Enable Users to Add Value6. Design for Network Effects

1. Fit in, Don’t Force Change2. Jam today and more jam

tomorrow

3. Just in Time and Just Enough

4. Act Local, think Global 5. Enable Users to Add Value6. Design for Network Effects

Six Principles of Software Design to Empower ScientistsSix Principles of Software Design to Empower Scientists

1. Keep your Friends Close2. Embed3. Keep Sight of the Bigger

Picture4. Favours will be in your

Favour5. Know your users6. Expect and Anticipate

Change

1. Keep your Friends Close2. Embed3. Keep Sight of the Bigger

Picture4. Favours will be in your

Favour5. Know your users6. Expect and Anticipate

Change

De Roure, D. and Goble, C. "Software Design for Empowering Scientists," IEEE Software, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 88-95, January/February 2009

When projects go bad...

When projects go bad...

Computer Scientists Considered Harmful?Computer Scientists Considered Harmful?

• “Build it and they will come” mentality– Second guessing requirements then going away and building

well engineered solutions to problems people didn’t know they had and perhaps never will

• Focusing on software not content• Assumption of benign environment and success as the

norm (NB excludes security experts)• Prioritising the generic over the specific• Always coming up with a complicated solution (because

they want to write a paper about it)• “Using jargon and being like totally patronising”• “What did they ever do that was useful anyway?”

• “Don’t worry about how to get those components working together, just use <buzzword > to fix that!”

• “If you stop and think about how it works for a second, it makes complete sense!”

• “Well, they should read the fantastic manual!”• “We don’t need to do any user testing. I’m a user and it

works fine for me!”• “Why would you want to do that, in that way?”• “Why aren’t you doing that in the same way as them?”• “Remind me to lend you a copy of the Mythical Man

Month”• “How can our users be so stupid? It’s so obvious!”

Things we never want to hearThings we never want to hear

Thanks to Neil Chue Hong

Don’t think rollout of technologies...

Think roll-in of users...

MassUse byResearchers

MassUse byResearchers

Knowledge co-production vs Service Delivery!

Where are we going and how are we going to get there?

We’ve succeeded when people can routinely do things they want to do that they couldn’t do before, resulting in new learning and research*

“Can I have a copy of your research object please?”

Go on the journey with your users and empower them. “Computer says yes!”

* Make sure you can measure this

Contact

David De Rouredder@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Carole Goblecarole.goble@manchester.ac.uk

See wiki.myexperiment.org

Thanks

Simon Coles, Duncan Hull, Neil Chue Hong,myExperiment team

De Roure, D., Goble, C. and Stevens, R. (2009) The Design and Realisation of the myExperiment Virtual Research Environment for Social Sharing of Workflows. Future Generation Computer Systems 25, pp. 561-567. doi:10.1016/j.future.2008.06.010

De Roure, D. and Goble, C. (2009) "Software Design for Empowering Scientists," IEEE Software, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 88-95, January/February 2009. doi:10.1109/MS.2009.22

Carole Goble and David De Roure (2008) Curating Scientific Web Services and Workflows. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 5 (September/October 2008) http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/CuratingScientificWebServ/47226

References