NASA Planetary Data System - User Scenario Wireframes

The main goal of this project is to deliver efficient applications for parsing, processing, validating and storing PDS data to the relational database and to allow users to easily search for needed data products, documents, etc. by using very flexible and useful adhoc queries. Parts of this goal will be an ability to find white spots in PDS data and check coverage of already collected results for a particular object or a group of objects.

NASA PDS has a huge archive of collected research data for many missions to planets, comets, asteroids, satellites, etc. In the solar system. That data has been collected for many years of space exploration. All data from spacecraft expeditions, ground-based observations and analysis, from professional scientists and amateur researchers is stored in the PDS format and publicly available here : http://pds.nasa.gov/.

This contest's purpose is to create the appropriate wireframes for users to access the PDS application. At the end of this contest, the client is looking for a good layout and workflow for experts and general user, a wireframe that showing clever data visualization, makes visitors enjoy the available features, and demonstrate all necessary data relationships.

Please read the contest details below, and feel free to post your questions in the forums.

Round 1

Submission design for client review
Workflow for General User

Round 2

Final Design
Workflow for General User and Expert User

Contest Details

The PDS format is used to formally organize and store planetary data as a hierarchy of flat files placed to some file systems. Generally, data is stored to data sets (containing observation, measurement, and research data – i.e. data products) and accompanying files (documenting and supporting usage of the data products).

While rich in depth and breadth of data, the PDS databases have developed in a disparate fashion over the years with different architectures and formats; thereby making the acquisition of data problematic. Consequently, the major challenge is how the data provided by PDS can be used and possibly combined to generate interesting applications (e.g., visualizations, analysis tools, educational applications, mash-ups)

Primary Goal & Design Considerations

There are 4 main purposes of this application which are :

1    To increase efficiency and reliability of white spots and coverage searching in PDS data. It will ultimately result in better coverage of PDS data, because researchers are supposed to easily found white spots by the relevant data (read PDS_idea.docx for better understanding about white spots definition)

2    To maximize the performance of planetary data researchers by highly relevant searching for easy access to data and coverage information. So, researchers will be able to perform more research in a smaller amount of time.

3    To improve PDS data availability for more users (especially for non-experts and non-professionals), meaning that the data will be looked at and researched by additional individuals.

4    To improve users satisfaction on planetary data usage and produce a positive scientific community buzz for this application.


Requirements

These are the user scenarios from the conceptualization that must be covered here:

1.    Get Help (4.4.16)
2.    Print Web Pages (4.4.17)
3.    Browse for Planetary Data (4.4.18)
4.    Perform Ad-hoc Searching of Planetary Data (4.4.19)
5.    Search for White Spots of Planetary Data (4.4.20)
6.    Search for Coverage of Planetary Data (4.4.21)
7.    Search for Correlated Planetary Data (4.4.22)
8.    Perform Auto-Complete in Search Queries (4.4.23)
9.    Filter Found Planetary Data Results (4.4.24)
10.    Get Predefined Search Queries (4.4.25)
11.    Get Popular Search Queries (4.4.26)
12.    View Planetary Data (4.4.27)
13.    Save Planetary Data to Export Files (4.4.28)
14.    Get Report on Planetary Data (4.4.29)

Target Audiences

The PDS is designed to serve the following user groups:

Expert User :

• Scientific community: includes senior scientists and their teams, grad students, and undergraduate students. Main goal: advance planetary science.
• Data reviewers: can also be members of the scientific community, but play a different role. Main goal: ensure integrity and usability of data going into PDS. However, other groups also use PDS data. The PDS Nodes currently spend a part of their time supporting requests of these groups as well:

General User :

• Informed hobbyists: those outside the scientific community that follow science teams for personal interest. Main goal: support hobby interests and goals, and/or further science.
• Educators: includes teachers, museums, planetariums, and other science curriculum developers. Main goal: educate others about planetary science and exploration.
• General public: anyone who wants to find images and data about planetary sciences. Main goal: find data.

There will be differences between expert user (Scientific community and Data reviewers) and General user (Informed hobbyists, Educators and General public) in terms of data and information that they should see/view. Show us your creativity how to present information and data for each usergroups.

Judging Criteria

Your submission also will be judged using following criteria :
1. Completeness and accuracy of the wireframe as defined in the attached requirements.
2. How well your wireframes provides a consistent user flow.
3. How well you implement the required data and any suggestions, interactions and user flow you recommend (provide any notes or comments for the clients).
4. How well you use data content from PDS link provided in conceptualization document for your wireframes instead using text ”lorem ipsum…”

 

Reference Links :
 

PDS Data format :

http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/standards-reference.shtml

http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/ddlookup/data_dictionary_lookup.cfm

 

Submissions & Source Files
Preview Image
Create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024 JPB or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submissions within it.

Submission File
All requested Contest Requirements stated above built in HTML or Axure.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted ideas. If you would like to submit notes please include a notes.txt file.

Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase you may be asked to modify your wireframes.