Annual Scientific Report 2015

to find the support they need. The new knowledge
base provides access to documentation in a number
of ways, including quick searching, related article
suggestion, subscribing to articles and clear routes of
further support. Working with our colleagues in the
Systems Applications, Systems Infrastructure and Web
Production teams, we improved our central ticketing
system by designing an online ‘help wizard’ that helps
users direct their questions to the relevant team and
locate the appropriate documentation.
Reducing technical debt
In 2015 we upgraded or moved 14 Drupal 6 websites and
portals in anticipation of support ending in February
2016. We worked with various stakeholders to identify
the best solution for transferring and maintaining
information from these sites.
User Experience Consultations
EMBL-EBI resources are developed according to our
users’ needs, and every year we carry out a detailed User
Survey. In 2015 analysis of over 1400 responses to our
survey provided valuable insights that we shared with
resource teams and consulted on change requests as
appropriate. Our UX experts collaborated with teams
and groups across the institute on projects as diverse as
facilitating workshops, planning survey planning design
and analysis, designing services and establishing a user
research workflow.
Brendan Vaughan
Web Development
BSc Industrial Biochemistry, University of
Limerick, 1995. MSc Bioinformatics, University
of Limerick, 1997. Human Genome Mapping
Project Resource Centre, 1998-1999. Lion
Bioscience, 1999 - 2004.
At EMBL-EBI since 2004.
Team Leader since 2013.
Future plans
We are excited about working on the new responsive
framework for the website which will not only make
updating and maintaining the site in a mobile world
easier, but will also allow us to tailor content to devices
and react to any new interfaces more quickly. As part of
the process a thorough content review in conjunction
with analytics will also afford us the opportunity to
ensure the content we serve is relevant and accessible
for users.
As part of the ELIXIR Excelerate project the team is
tasked with helping to create a mechanism to update
the ELIXIR Registry with information about tools and
resources housed at the EBI. This work is related to the
efforts in the Tools Committee to characterise and store
tool information and will most likely involve enhancing
the content database.
While the release of Drupal 8 was anticipated earlier in
2015, it wasn’t November that it finally appeared. The
team has already undergone research and training in
Drupal 8 and looks forward to using Drupal 8 for the next
generation of our websites where appropriate.
The team is also part of several internal projects at
EMBL-EBI to improve integration of services to
our users in areas such as data submission and tool
provision.
Selected publications
1000 Genomes Project Consortium, Auton A, Brooks
LD, et al. (2015) A global reference for human genetic
variation. Nature 526:68-74
Budd A, Dinkel H, Corpas M, et al. (2015) Ten simple
rules for organizing an unconference. PLoS Comput Biol
11:e1003905
Lappalainen I, Almeida-King J, Kumanduri V, et al.
(2015) The European Genome-phenome Archive of
human data consented for biomedical research. Nat
Genet 47:692-695
The events portal, launched in 2015, is a database-driven platform that
pulls together all information for an event from a central source. This
saves time, ensures content is up-to-date throughout the website and
allows for consistent, appealing presentation.
Squizzato S, Park YM, Buso N, et al. (2015) The
EBI Search engine: providing search and retrieval
functionality for biological data from EMBL-EBI.
Nucleic Acids Res. 43:w585-w588
2015 EMBL-EBI Annual Scientific Report 158