User Experience Resources for RSEs — Two BSSw Fellowship Projects

User Experience (UX) is not widely practiced for scientific software due to several factors. RSEs typically have limited time and resources to do the long and involved UX methodologies that are recommended in industry or to hire an expert to do these. Additionally, as current and former co-chairs of the US-RSE User Experience Working Group we have seen that there is a need for community spaces to share challenges and opportunities along with easily digestible information on performing UX work in RSE contexts.

This poster presents two UX resources being created by 2026 Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellows [1] to address these needs. Discussion at this poster will provide both authors with valuable community feedback to help us enhance our in progress fellowship deliverables so that they are as relevant as possible to RSEs.

The first is a web-based UX resource for RSE developers that will detail what UX is and how it can be applied to scientific software. It will catalogue easy-to-implement UX methodologies and how they can be applied to the research software development process. The resource will focus on methods that can be done with few resources, such as heuristic evaluation and paper prototypes. This tailored UX resource will give RSEs the tools they need to make scientific software more usable and ultimately better serve the needs of the researchers who are using it.

The second is an online open community hub, UX in Science, that coalesces and advocates resources for scientific user experience (UX) knowledge and resources. This hub will enable two goals. First is to help existing working groups and teams across organizations more formally share their efforts and outputs to grow the burgeoning scientific UX community. Second, UX in Science will provide a curated environment for broader scientific software development communities (such as BSSw) to turn to for a wide range of trusted information. This will help scientific software developers more easily be able to learn new skills that advance their own practices in resource limited environments, furthering workforce development.