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Co-designing Scientific Software: Hackathons for Participatory Interface Design

Taxonomy is the branch of biology concerned with classifying organisms. Taxonomic work entails a range of complex human-computer and human-information interactions, which are under-supported by current software environments, partially because taxonomic software is largely built through ad hoc collaborations by taxonomists themselves. This results in poor user experience and difficult-to-use tools. Here we describe an interface design Hackathon held as part of the NSF-funded Transforming Taxonomic Interfaces project. We brought taxonomists, software developers, and information scientists together to rapidly prototype new interfaces. Taxonomists quickly took to paper prototyping, and produced a number of promising designs. Emergent themes and findings relevant to the HCI community are described herein.