Beyond Power: Making Bioinformatics Tools User-centric

Bioinformatics tools and software frameworks are becoming increasingly important in the analysis of genomic and biological data. To understand how to construct and design effective tools for Biologists, both their interaction behavior and task flow need to be captured. In this presentation, we will begin by modeling the biologist, including experiences with current tools, and demonstrate how this information can be transformed into UI design patterns. We will then integrate these results into an iterative pattern-oriented design process, inspired by traditional user-centered design methodologies. We will demonstrate how the complicity of task models and patterns can lead to user-centric bioinformatics tools, with the objective of making them more usable. An empirical study carried out with the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) site will be discussed, including future avenues of integrating task- and process-based approaches.

Automated Authentication of Identity Documents

Identity documents (IDs), such as passports and drivers' licenses are relied upon to deter fraud and stop terrorism. A multitude of document types and increased expertise in forgery make human inspection of such documents inconsistent and error prone. New generation reader/authenticator technology can assist in the ID screening process. Such devices can read the information on the ID, authenticate it, and provide an overall security risk analysis. This talk will discuss how image processing and pattern recognition technology were used in the implementation of one such commercial device, the AssureTec i-Dentify reader. The reader is based on a high resolution color CCD camera which automatically captures a presented ID under a variety of light sources (Visible, UV, IR, and others) in a few seconds.

Automated processing of IDs involves a number of interesting technical challenges which will be discussed: sensing the presence of a document in the reader viewing area; cropping the document and extracting its size; identifying the document type by rapid comparison to a known document library; locating, extracting, and image processing of data fields of various types (text, photo, symbols, barcodes); processing text fields with appropriate OCR engines; cross-checking data from different parts of a document for consistence; checking for the presence of security features (e.g., UV patterns); and providing an overall risk assessment that the document is falsified.

A live demonstration of the AssureTec i-Dentify reader will be given.