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. 2021 Jul 2;49(W1):W216-W227.
doi: 10.1093/nar/gkab225.

Expasy, the Swiss Bioinformatics Resource Portal, as designed by its users

Séverine Duvaud  1 , Chiara Gabella  1 , Frédérique Lisacek  2   3 , Heinz Stockinger  1 , Vassilios Ioannidis  1 , Christine Durinx  1
Affiliations

Expasy, the Swiss Bioinformatics Resource Portal, as designed by its users

Séverine Duvaud et al. Nucleic Acids Res. .

Abstract

The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (https://www.sib.swiss) creates, maintains and disseminates a portfolio of reliable and state-of-the-art bioinformatics services and resources for the storage, analysis and interpretation of biological data. Through Expasy (https://www.expasy.org), the Swiss Bioinformatics Resource Portal, the scientific community worldwide, freely accesses more than 160 SIB resources supporting a wide range of life science and biomedical research areas. In 2020, Expasy was redesigned through a user-centric approach, known as User-Centred Design (UCD), whose aim is to create user interfaces that are easy-to-use, efficient and targeting the intended community. This approach, widely used in other fields such as marketing, e-commerce, and design of mobile applications, is still scarcely explored in bioinformatics. In total, around 50 people were actively involved, including internal stakeholders and end-users. In addition to an optimised interface that meets users' needs and expectations, the new version of Expasy provides an up-to-date and accurate description of high-quality resources based on a standardised ontology, allowing to connect functionally-related resources.

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Figures

Graphical Abstract
Graphical Abstract
The illustration of Expasy's redesign through a user-centric approach: all the elements that contributed to the process (icons) and the main strengths (stars) of the new implementation.
Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Elements on the homepage of Expasy: 1. Single search bar at the top; 2. Filter panel on the left and 3. Resources listed as cards and sorted randomly in the main section of the page.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Expasy result page: the two types of search results are visually separated. 1. (Top) Cross-resource search result; with the number of hits found in each of the 19 databases; 2. (Bottom) Regular search.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Detailed view of a resource (ViralZone). The two grey boxes display the EDAM (28) terms related to Operations [1] and Topics, Data and Formats [2]. The bottom of the page [3] lists the suggestions of resources that share at least one term of the Topic type with ViralZone.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Process of development of Expasy. 1. Project strategy definition, 2. Four-phased redesign process (preliminary phase, elaboration phase, iterative phase, implementation phase) and 3. Final product.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Usability issues of the previous version of ExPASy. (A) Dropdown menu (regular search and cross-resource search) and (B) output of the Google Search Console's mobile-friendly test tool.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
The first wireframe of the Expasy project. (A) Home page, (B) resource detailed view and (C) search result page.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
The final version of the iteratively refined wireframe as validated by the end-users. (A) Home page; (B) resource detailed view; (C and D) search result pages: C highlights on the regular search, D highlights on the cross-resource search. Note that the search bar is always present.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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