# TRE Satellite Event notes - User experience in TREs

## Prompts

- How do we design TREs to be as seamless to use as possible?
- Who are we designing TREs for?
- Are there design principles we can generalise and open source?

## Notes

- How do we design TREs to be as seamless to use as possible?
  - Or - what are the barriers to using TREs?
  - Unfamiliar - how do we get the tools we're used to
    - and expectation: I've set up my own machine how I want it, and now I have to change everything?
  - Over-complication? If you just need Excel can you find it/use it without other things getting in the way?
  - Extra governance/ethics/etc - researchers have already gone through a lot of approvals; do TREs require extra work?
  - Education about approval extent - do researchers assume that once they've got a TRE they can do anything they want?
  - Users don't know what they can do with a TRE - how to communicate that and engage new users
  - Different users want different things - from just Excel to CLI HPC systems
  - Even between TREs there are implementation differences; how do we manage the expectations of existing users as well as new?
  - Perhaps a catalogue - what different TREs are available, what datasets are available, how do you apply for/access/work with them?
  - Is there mileage in standardising TRE user experience? If you need to register for multiple TREs will you need to learn all of them?
  - Modularisation of TREs - one infrastructure but multiple options for UI, tooling, data access etc.?
    - Research in other areas suggests that giving users choice could improve productivity & happiness.
- Who are we designing TREs for?
  - Is this just for researchers? What kind of researchers? What do they want?
    - If we're building for NHS staff/clinicians they're used to (old!) Windows machines
    - Will our TRE users be comfortable with the UX we provide?
  - Can we educate our users (researchers) in new ways to approach tasks?
- Are there design principles we can generalise and open source?

## Actions/next steps

- Explore modular components for building researcher-specified TREs - workspaces, environments, data access, tooling etc.
- Training for both CLI and GUI tools is critical to encouraging users to feel confortable in any TRE.
- Make sure that datasets (data catalogue), TRE options etc. are all properly published, advertised, quickly accessible and well-described.
- central resource for TREs - (trustedresearch.ac.uk?) - publicity, manage a "trusted packages" repository of tools, catalogue all TREs, data catalogues etc?