Neuroscience needs a UX upgrade

Neuroscience is in desperate need of an upgrade. Cutting edge work is often overly complicated by the obscure software we use, and surrounded by poor user experience. This increases the time from conception to completion of experiment ideas, and often causes significant headache.

Studying the brain is one of the greatest intellectual, and technical challenges of our time. The work requires a wide range of skills including software development, empirical design, statistical analysis, and academic prowess. We need software that enables the users, not software that intimidates them. Neuroscientists and Experimental Psychologists are solving hard problems — understanding the brain — but yet we routinely muddle through old code and decipher borrowed analysis pipelines in order to manage and analyze our data.

Research labs across the globe are in desperate need of software that makes neuroscience manageable no matter where they are, what operating system they’re using, or what they’re an expert in. Yes, there is software out there that allows you to collect, analyze, and publish scientific data, but the user interfaces are outdated and non-intuitive, which results in a poor experience.

We need software that makes neuroscience scalable, replicable, efficient, and enjoyable.

I aim to please. I’m making it my mission to make software for science that others enjoy using.

My mission is just starting out, so there aren’t any miracle solutions yet, but I’m working on them!

Who am I? I’m a neuroscientist, and software developer. I work at the University of Oxford as part of the Analysis Group. I work with the popular software package known as FSL. Writing software is my creative medium of choice.