Deliverable 5.7: Requirement Analysis and User Studies. Initial Result

In HEREDITARY’s Work Package 5 (WP5) we develop and evaluate data visualization and information extraction methods, to support analysis and understanding of multimodal biomedical data. Requirement Analysis is a process focused on obtaining, from domain experts, requirements that data analysis and visualization approaches should fulfill. These guide the development, allow to measure the success, and evaluate the results. Requirement analysis is a continuous process.

In the Deliverables 5.1 and 5.3 of Month 12, based on preliminary requirement analysis with project partners, visualization components covering a wide range of data modalities were developed. In the course of HetERogeneous sEmantic Data integratIon for the guT-bRain interplaY (HEREDITARY), these components will gradually be developed into data visualization applications, for application and evaluation. In this deliverable we describe our activities and results in requirement engineering, to inform the application development. The activities to date led to varying levels of completeness of the visualization components and prototypes. Some components are already quite mature (e.g., the gut-brain visualization component, see Deliverable 5.4), while other have begun later and are on a conceptual and pre-prototypical implementation level yet (e.g., Section 5 in this document).

If a certain degree of maturity has been achieved for a component, user studies can be performed, assessing in a quantitative and/or qualitative way how requirements are met, how the approach performs in general, and to identify further development potential.

This deliverable summarizes work in general initial requirement analysis and user studies from a workshop conducted in March 2025. Also, a user study and requirement analysis for exploring knowledge graphs are presented, as well as a requirement analysis for data analysis in cell-cell communication patterns. Furthermore, a concept for a user study to assess and develop the Droplets image visualization technique is presented. The requirement analysis and evaluation efforts provide that development is aligned both with the state of the art, and with application requirements by analysts and domain scientists.