About this Document

This document summarizes the results of the RFC 2 discussion during the 2005 Cytoscape Retreat.

• Section 1 documents the final group ideas. Ideas which garnered the most ideas are shown first.
• Section 2 document individual ideas from Cytoscape retreat attendees.

Section 1: Final Group Ideas

Idea 1: Gather Feedback from Cytoscape Users

Total Number of Votes: 6

Summary:

• Cytoscape has thousands of users. We should develop a feedback and information gathering mechanism for this large user base.
• Feature prioritization should be based on user feedback.
• Display statistics on the Cytoscape site about most liked, wanted, and disliked features.
• Organize user meetings, perhaps in combination with another meeting users might attend.
• Provide easy mechanism to make feature requests, submit new ideas.
• Create a User FAQ

• Create a User Q&A forum online for new users (Cytoscape discuss seems very programmer oriented)

• Conduct user survey.

Idea 2: Create Development Coordinators

Total Number of Votes: 6

Summary:

• Partition and assign rotating responsibility for development areas.
• "Development coordinators" will be tasked with centralizing and facilitating communication between areas.
• Posts held for 1-2 years.
• May need one top-level coordinator to arbitrate development coordinators and cover misc. tasks.

Idea 3: Be Clear About Use-Cases and Long-Term Vision

Total Number of Votes: 4

Summary:

• Implement a process for defining use-cases, and building comunity consensus.
• Adopt a Mozilla-like process for development to reach these goals.
• Implement this for 2.3; maybe not possible for long-term vision.

Idea 4: Adopt a more Systematic Development Process

Total Number of Votes: 3

Summary:

• User requirements gathering (talk to our users more)
• Technical specs and documentation
• Coding
• Testing
• User Feedback
• Documentation for the end-user

Idea 5: Create a new Project Coordinator / Architect

Total Number of Votes: 1

Summary:

• Full-time position
• Central contact for both developers and users.
• Authority to make decisions, but answerable to core developers, PIs, and community.
• Must know the code.

Idea 6: User-Driven Functionality

Total Number of Votes: 1

Summary:

• Solicit feedback from biological users in outreach efforts (e.g. external demos, tutorials) in a systematic form, as follows:
  • ask a structured set of questions, including, "Why are you using the software?", "Can you perform this function now?", and so forth.
  • ask if users would be willing to weigh in again 6 months later.
• Have a designated Cytostaffer whose role is to assess feedback and identify key functionality to address major concerns, and works closely with core developerrs to communicate and track targeted developments.
• Track development efforts on the wiki, and open it up to users.

Section 2: Ideas from Individual Retreat Participants

Nerius Landys

We seem to be easy swayed by problems reported by users, etc. This forces us to focus on short-term development goals rather than long-term goals. To see Cytoscape really break through, we should be focusing on what Cytoscape will become five years from now.

Chris Workman

Rotating offices for development areas (MVC might be a natural breakdown). "Development coordinators" help to centralize and facilitate flow of information. An office would also be need to coordinate the development coordinators. Posts held for 1-2 years.

Allan Kuchinsky

Collaborate with usability / UI research groups at universities. Do student usability review projects; use Cytoscape UI as a vehicle, e.g. for heuristic walk-throughs.

Mike Smoot

Create a project manager / chief architect. Must know the code; must have authority to decide what goes in / stays out and have veto power over PIs. Should be dedicated to Cytoscape work - not a part-time gig.

Michael Creech

Define a process for reviewing and determining Cytoscape core additions / modifications made by the community.

Janette Jones

Create a project administrator. Two functions to oversee: understand timings and linkages / codependencies of modules and also synthesize feedback from the user community (ie. keep track of who they are; organize scheduled feedback from them, and feed that back to the Cytoscape developers.

Patrick Warren

Open a structured route for user feedback, e.g. online pools for feature prioritization, online user feedback form, etc.

Gary Bader

Create a clear group-based process for biological use-case driven core feature prioritization and implementation review. Be clear about our use-cases (bio-focused); use this to prioritize new features; review by group of new core features; do this early in the release cycle. Right now, we are not clear about our use cases.