User-Centered Design for Biomedical Literature Search User Interfaces

Biomedical literature search tools are crucial resources for the work of physicians, biologists, and bioinformatics. Many of the genetic-medical diagnoses depend on the findings in these literature resources. Despite the importance and value of the information stored in these resources, the user interface (UI) implemented by such tools present several usability problems converting the query and interpretation of the information into complex and time-consuming tasks. In this sense, an user-centered design (UCD) approach can improve the usability of these UIs facilitating the interaction, analysis, and comparison of biomedical information, and, consequently, improving the productivity of practitioners in this domain. This paper presents a user-centered design (UCD) approach for designing UIs for the search of biomedical literature considering the usability problems and proposing design solutions to such problems. How to apply the UCD approach and the design solutions proposed for the usability problems become the main contribution of this work.