Team:Wellesley Desyne/zTree

zTree

TOOL OVERVIEW

zTree is an interactive, 3D visualization of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts that draws upon Parc’s Cone Trees visualization technique for representing hierarchical information. The top of the hierarchy represents a particular library, with nodes drawn like index cards to represent a generic part type, marked using Synthetic Biology Open Language, or a concrete biological part. With a large data set, a 2D structure would not fit on the screen, forcing the user to scroll or resize; zTree maximizes screen real estate, thereby allowing the user to visualize the whole structure at once.

Our goals for zTree this summer were twofold:
1. Provide users with an intuitive, interactive way to navigate the Registry of Standard Biological Parts
2. Make a modular enough solution so that the application can eventually be used for a wide array of data sets

Implementation

Implementation text here.

PURPOSE

Purpose text here.

Results

We conducted a preliminary usability study of zTree with 9 Wellesley College students. The study employed a within subjects design, aiming to compare how students accomplished a series of simple tasks on zTree versus the Registry of Standard Biological Parts website. The students were asked to browse for a specific part, estimate the number of parts in a category, and compare two different part types.

The task list was devised to:
1. Study the effect of zTree's carousel structure on the user’s ability to understand hierarchical relationships and estimate the size of the data space.
2. Improve functionality and evaluate overall experience through qualitative user feedback and survey responses.

Demo

Future Work

Most features desired for zTree were completely over the course of the summer. As the registry changed, the data sheet code needs to be updated. In the future we need to make the data sheets compliant with the registry API so that the program works with any future changes. Another iGEM team seems to be working on search function which we would like to integrate into the program. Some research has gone into which type of backgrounds for the zSpace eliminate ghosting so the team would also like to try to use one of those backgrounds to improve the visualization of their program. Using the pen to navigate and spin the carousels would be a good feature for the future as well.