Team:SYSU-Software/FutureWork

SYSU-SOFTWARE IGEM 2015

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Future work

During the summer we did our best to design, implement and test the software. We did dry-lab and wet-lab testing, user studies and so on to debug the software and improve its user experience. Despite great effort, it is inevitable that flaws exist in CORE. Future work is needed to further improve CORE.

1. Add more genetic designs to the database.

At present, our data are mostly from projects of iGEM teams of previous years. Users' ideas might be limited by the limited data source. Meanwhile, lack of data would not be conducive to automatic design. Although we have allowed the user to add data themselves, we still need to expand the database in order to improve the software fundamentally.

2. Improve the compatibility of the database.

Our software requires strict data storage format to ensure the reliability of software design. But a contradiction point is that this would hinder the introduction of the data from other sources to CORE. So we need more flexibility and compatibility in database so that data of another form can be imported into CORE.

3. More validated and universal mathematical models are needed.

Since mathematical models in synthetic biology are not universal, we can do little to . Therefore, we need to emphasize the importance of mathematical modeling to designers. We encourage them not only to model their own designs but also validate the existing models with wet-lab experiments if possible.

4. Keep on improving the user interface (UI) and user experience.

We believe that the communication between users should not be limited to the question and answer. We should provide more ways for the users to exchange their ideas on the design concept, the operation of the experiments, etc. So we plan to add more functions to the personal center.

5. Study the needs of more users.

WBefore the project, we studied the needs of wet-lab teams. During and after the project, we did user studies to learn how users interact with CORE. However, user studies are limited only to four people. In the future we are going to study the needs of the users.