User-centered design and evaluation of the neotoma paleoecology open software ecosystem

Making paleoecological data accessible, usable, and useful to a global and diverse community of researchers, educators, and students across Earth sciences is an essential yet challenging task. Multiple data access and discovery tools must co-evolve with ever-changing user needs through an iterative, open-ecosystem software development approach. We employ a user-centered design study to evaluate one such ecosystem, the Neotoma Paleoecology Database, whose mission is to advance understanding of global-change processes by providing an expert-curated data resource. Neotoma contains over 11 million observations from 30,000 + datasets across 20,000 + sites, representing proxies of environmental and ecological conditions of the past. Neotoma comprises three interrelated software components – an interactive web mapping application, statistical programming package, and API – that provide different levels of functionality to different audiences. Although development efforts of these software components have involved the user community, Neotoma lacks a systematic evaluation process, which is important for informing the gap between perceived potential and actual utility. We address this knowledge gap using scenario-based design exercises and a usability/utility assessment. Major contributions include actionable insights for enhancing Neotoma's user experience and a user-centered design model that can be adapted to advance the development of other Earth and environmental science software ecosystems.