As Logan Weidenhammer noted in IGBF-2415 notes, people new to IGB have a hard time getting back to the start screen that shows all the pictures of species.

When I installed IGB and opened it for the first time, I clicked into the H. sapiens (needs a tool tip) genome image, I want to go back to the home page, I look to the top left and there are no back arrows. So I look for an icon for home or “IGB”. There is a ‘home’ icon but for me it was not in the top left where I was looking for it per convention, so I as the user just assumed there was none.

As noted, we expect applications with navigation from view to view to have some kind of "Home" widget we can use to take us back to the start of our journey. For example, Web sites usually have some kind of "home" page link at the top left of the screen.

For this task, let's trying moving the "Home" icon on the IGB toolbar to the far left end of the toolbar to make it easier to go back to the IGB start screen after selecting a genome.

This will like be a very easy and fast change to implement.

Let's then test how this relatively small change affects usability. For this, let's invite a few volunteers to go back to the home/start screen after loading the human genome, as described in RW's notes from IGBF-2415. Let's compare IGB usability before and after the change.

Suggestion for usability evaluation task workflow:

• Schedule a session over zoom with a volunteer; request their permission to record the session with IGB (only need record the part where they are interacting with IGB)
• Ask the volunteer to share their screen
• Ask the volunteer to install IGB on their computer (make note of any difficulties if they arise)
• Once IGB starts, ask the volunteer to open the human genome
• After the human genome has opened, ask the volunteer to return to the previous screen (don't use the word "home")
• Watch for how the volunteer interacts with the IGB screen, such as where they move their cursor. Our hypothesis is that if we put the "house" icon nearer top left corner, the volunteer will find it faster with less searching.