Good Usability Practices in Scientific Software Development
It tackles usability issues for developers and users in computational science, but it is incremental as it builds on existing usability concepts.
The paper addresses the overlooked usability requirements in scientific software development by introducing nine aspects of good usability and highlighting best practices tailored for computational science.
Scientific software often presents very particular requirements regarding usability, which is often completely overlooked in this setting. As computational science has emerged as its own discipline, distinct from theoretical and experimental science, it has put new requirements on future scientific software developments. In this paper, we discuss the background of these problems and introduce nine aspects of good usability. We also highlight best practices for each aspect with an emphasis on applications in computational science.