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From 2013.igem.org

Contents 1 Week 1: May 28 - May 31 2 Week 2: June 3 - June 7 3 Week 3: June 10 - June 14

Week 1: May 28 - May 31

Tuesday: First day of work at the HCI lab and I'm already starting to work through background readings. I was assigned to the Eugene DeSyne project, and the background readings address first-order logic, a topic that I know nothing about. I'm struggling to understand the symbols involved in logic, but I'm sure I'll come to understand it in time. There's also readings about visual languages, which is quite intriguing for someone coming from a linguistics background.

Thursday: The Wellesley iGEM team visited MIT for a BioBuilder workshop with Natalie Kuldell. Unfortunately, as a graduating senior, I had other activities to attend to and I was unable to stay for the afternoon wet lab workshops. In any case, the morning lectures were helpful at providing an introduction to synthetic biology, especially the goals that people in the field strive to achieve through experiments and research.

Friday: Graduation at Wellesley! I received my diploma with a B.A. in Linguistics, but I'm not quite leaving Wellesley yet. I'm excited to spend the summer working at the Wellesley HCI lab before moving on to the next chapter of my life.

Week 2: June 3 - June 7

Monday: Today we visited BU to meet the BU iGEM team and learn more about synthetic biology. The team presented a general introduction to synthetic biology and after lunch, we began learning about Eugene, a domain specific language for synthetic biologists. As someone with very little programming background, understanding Eugene was rather difficult. Already I could notice the different ways BU and Wellesley students approached solving problems, and it was interesting to work with a group of students who have extensive experience in a wet lab.

Tuesday: Day 2 at BU! Today, we presented our proposed projects to the BU iGEM team, and they provided feedback to us. The presentation could have gone more smoothly, but we learned a lot from hearing what the BU team members had to say. They definitely view our projects in a different light because they come from a strong biology background. I enjoy hearing input from people who come from a variety of backgrounds, which is something I had experienced when I participated in a program that involved students from Babson, Olin, and Wellesley Colleges this past January. Afterwards, we went on a tour of the BU wet lab and saw their high end flow cytometer. Pretty nifty!

Wednesday: Today, the Eugene DeSyne team (now with the addition of Sravanti) spent the morning learning more in depth about the previous incarnation of the Eugene DeSyne project, which was in paper prototype stage. Afterwards, we made a list of things we liked and didn't like about this previous incarnation, and started thinking of new designs to improve upon this model. We were thinking of incorporating windows that can be hidden and revealed to free up screen space, rather than leave a clutter of windows all over the screen. At the end of the day, I participated in a user study for another project going on in the HCI lab, Tabula. It was interesting participating in a user study that was very open-ended, but having experienced a user study before, I knew how to verbalize my thought process and make it clear to the experimenter what I was envisioning. A long day of work today, that's for sure.

Thursday: Today, I joined the Tabula team to help out with running user studies. I had expressed interest in user testing prior to beginning my summer job at the HCI lab, so I was glad to have the opportunity to experience the experimenter's side of the study I just participated in. I read up on some background information on Tabula, and then in the afternoon, we had several user studies scheduled back-to-back. I was responsible for transcribing the dialogue, and it was interesting to hear what other users did to accomplish the same tasks I had tried the previous day.

Friday: Basically today involved user studies scheduled back-to-back from 10 am to 5 pm, and I led most of the studies today. It was quite nerve-wracking to make sure I was explaining the task clearly without giving subtle cues that could implant a bias in the participants' ideas. I also needed to make sure they were providing thorough descriptions of their intentions, otherwise the testing session would be unproductive. I think I did a good job running through the studies, especially for a first-timer! As there were studies going on all day, I had plenty of time to practice and refine the process.

Week 3: June 10 - June 14

Monday: Concluded user studies today! Also caught up with the Eugene DeSyne team's progress during the time I was working on the Tabula user studies. Orit suggested that we focus on developing new ways of visualizing rules, rather than continue refining the general user interface. She mentioned that we should draw inspiration from UML and the bio-visualization used in MoClo Planner. I'm starting to realize it's kind of difficult to create new ideas when you've become so invested and attached to a single design. I'm going to have to learn to let go of my ideas and try to create new ones with fresh eyes, lest I go through the 5 stages of grief every time an idea is shot down and torn apart.

Tuesday: Started developing our "tree" visualization of rules. This is in addition to the "icon" visualization, in which we created icons to represent components of rules.