Socio-Cultural characteristics of usability of bioinformatics databases and tools

Abstract

With the increasing importance of the usability of bioinformatics systems and databases, this paper examines the socio-cultural characteristics that may affect the usability of such tools. We understand socio-cultural characteristics to be the norms, values, and beliefs that mediate the interactions between the structures and institutions of science (i.e. disciplines, universities, funding organizations), and its practitioners. These factors are not necessarily distinct from the technical features of a database, but do nevertheless affect the context in which one chooses to use a particular set of tools. We have developed three socio-cultural characteristics of bioinformatics database usability: accessibility, utility, and portability. By ‘accessibility’, we mean the social and cultural attributes that make resources open and available for use, such as intellectual property arrangements or institutional reputation and prestige. ‘Utility’ in this context means the perceived usefulness of a database, which can be determined by non-technical matters such as trust and taste. ‘Portability’ refers to the social aspects of criteria such as maintenance funding, and input and storing standards that allow a database to move through space and time. In this article, we call for a social science research programme on these — and other — socio-cultural characteristics to usability. We invite researchers in human–computer interaction, bioinformatics, usability engineering and other areas to extend their work to examine the social contexts in which these systems are used, and the sociocultural factors that mediate their use. Such a research programme would increase the multidisciplinary nature of these emergent fields, and help address the complexities of work in the post-genomic era.