Discovery

At the heart of our design journey, we dive deep into the world of our users, uncovering their stories, challenges, and aspirations. We unearthed intriguing underlying issues that have the potential to transform our approach and drive innovative solutions.

3000+

Surveys Sent

Co-Design Sessions

Interviews Conducted

60+

Hours of Synthesis

Why not FAIR?

The FAIR Principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable—are key to effective research data management. These principles ensure that research data is well-organized, easy to access, compatible across various systems, and ready for future use.

Despite their potential to save researchers significant time and effort, these practices aren’t universally followed.

If the FAIR principles are so effective, why don’t more researchers adopt them?

Findability

Inadequate labeling and metadata hinder data discovery during research endeavors.

Accessibility

Limited accessibility impedes authorized researchers from promptly accessing crucial data.

Interoperability

Inconsistent formats hinder data compatibility across various tools, complicating research workflows and collaboration.

Reusability

Insufficient documentation hampers future research endeavors by rendering data incomprehensible and unusable.

Findability

Inadequate labeling and metadata hinder data discovery during research endeavors.

Accessibility

Limited accessibility impedes authorized researchers from promptly accessing crucial data.

Interoperability

Inconsistent formats hinder data compatibility across various tools, complicating research workflows and collaboration.

Reusability

Insufficient documentation hampers future research endeavors by rendering data incomprehensible and unusable.

Here's what we found

By improving the scalability and usability of a data storage platform, TigerData can effectively handle the demands of researchers working with large datasets.

Promoting standardized data organization practices across the university will streamline collaboration and information sharing.

Enhancing the user experience by developing a user-friendly interface will make this powerful resource more accessible to researchers with varying levels of technical expertise.

Incentivizing adoption of TigerData over mandating its use will encourage broader participation.

Diving deeper into the problem space...

"Even though I see the value in using GitHub, I gravitate towards using WhatsApp and Google Suite."

An Interview Participant

People are creatures of habit. Even when clearly presented with a better option, researchers are likely to resort to their original methods. Our survey of 68 researchers with diverse backgrounds reveals that researchers tend to utilize the most convenient tools for managing their data.

Currently, institutional clusters (which can host large amounts of data) can only be accessed through command line prompts.

However, from our research, command line tools often have a steep learning curve, requiring users to memorize commands and understand complex syntax. For researchers with limited technical expertise, this can be daunting and time-consuming.

"I would prefer if there was a GUI for everything data-related. It would make my life so much easier."

Another Interview Participant

According to a recent cost-benefit analysis done by the European Union, decentralized research processes and a lack of FAIR principles across government institutions and universities cost the European economy about...

€10.2 billion

every year

We found that the cost for research was computed by collapsing across 7 cost parameters. As a team, we were specifically interested in looking at time and storage inefficiencies. We discovered that concerning time, approximately 31.52% of the time spent finding data could be saved with an appropriate application of FAIR principles and implementing quality metadata. Additionally, we found that on average, large datasets are operated through roughly 5 repositories apart from backups, which is highly inefficient.

"People don’t follow good Data Management practices and they panic at the time of publishing. They need to practice these protocols from the very beginning."

A Librarian at CMU

There are several guidelines that researchers need to comply with to publish papers under grants and funding from different organizations. Understanding the nuances of what is required can be a challenge.

Increasingly, there are federal and state mandates that urge institutions to implement open science and open access policies (e.g., OSTP’s official memorandum, NIH publishing criteria, etc.).

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