**Community Member: David Warden

warden@geneseo.edu
SUNY Geneseo
Timezone: Eastern U.S.

Campus Champion, CIT
Senior Systems Analyst & Director of Research Technology
https://www.geneseo.edu/cit/faculty-staff

Availability:

Interviewers:
Lissie Fein
Nathan Tolbert (may only attend the 1st hour)

Via sign up form:

How should we address you?
Dave

Please describe your experience with supercomputing
I have very little experience with supercomputing

Are you familiar with the U.S. National Science Foundation's ACCESS program?
I don't use ACCESS but have heard of it

Via pre-survey:

Please describe your experience using advanced research computing?
I am the sysadmin for our campus shared, remote access Lambda workstation for HPC-lite tasks. I am an OSG user, but haven't done more than explore my login node.

If you've used ACCESS, what allocation level did you start with?
Not applicable

What have you used or hope to use the ACCESS website to do?
Request an explore allocation, document the process, evangelize ACCESS to my campus, and help my campus community use ACCESS.

Remind us what your role is, as it applies to working with ACCESS:
Educator (Campus Champion)

What is your research domain?
No answer

What courses do you teach?
No answer

What is advanced research computing is your resource particularly well suited for?
No answer

Who are your stakeholders?
No answer

What one thing do you appreciate most about the program?
I especially appreciate the support that I can direct my campus community to, as my institution is so small that my research computing support role is only half FTE.

What one thing would you change about the program?
I'm not sure yet! This is a little silly but I'm someone who struggles to update their CV, so the CV requirement for Explore allocations has been a barrier for my brain.

RECORDING: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1t_N8CXooEh0OEJGP0YbgEquemCfay6LK

Interview guide:

60–90 minute interview. Each task will take approximately 5-10 minutes.

• Login, introductions, set up screen share, record

We ask that you “talk aloud” as you are completing your task – telling us what you are thinking about and looking for as you complete your task.

• Task 1: Where would you go to find out what type of research is being conducted using ACCESS? Is your institution’s area of research/study/classroom activity represented on the ACCESS website?
  Interview notes here

• And by I'm my brain is trained. Top left. So I would probably start in the top left and then work my way across left to right. I don't think it would be allocations. It might be resources. I don't think so. I might be tempted to look at events and trainings. Tempted to try support, but knew like if I wanted to know what other people were doing, I would probably start with news.

• Went to News

• So I clicked on the biology tag.
  
  

• Task 2: Where can you find information specifically targeted for you?
  Interview notes here
  Easily found landing pages, wasn’t sure which landing page to go to— Identified with Researcher/Educator

• Did not know which category he belonged in —wanted a “people who help researchers” category

• We should still consider a Research Support persona, that includes sys. admins.

Task 3: Are you eligible to use ACCESS? Where can you find eligibility requirements?
Interview notes here
Noticed on landing page. Found eligibility messaging confusing , hard to quickly find undergrad eligibility.

Can Eligibility requirement be summed up, with a table or checklists? Hard to get info quickly

These get lost:

• You can have financial support from any funding agency or source and still be eligible for an allocation.

• Even if you don’t have any funding, you are still eligible for an allocation. However, PIs without funding are only eligible for one allocation, while PIs with funding awards can receive as many allocations as they have awards.

hyphen in graduate-student on Eligibility

Open

• Task 4: Find information about the cost to use ACCESS.
  Interview notes here

• Looked in allocations page , Did CTR F to search pages

• Would hope that most people would go to allocations or verify when getting first project.

• Thinks people may find ACCESS because they are looking for free resources.

• Task 5: What is an ACCESS resource? Where can you find the type of resources that are available through ACCESS? How would you select an ACCESS resource?
  Interview notes here

Started in top left - Found RESOURCES

• Loved the Resources pages

• Had some trouble with filters, “include versus exclude indicator”( saw orange color as reddish which had wrong association for him)

• Stony Brook is an affiliated university so he chose to look more at that RP.

• Liked software search

• Liked Recent Projects, Would be interested in example code in GitHub repositories

• [Get Started with OOKAMI] button felt unintuitive for linking to “Get your First Project”

Consider filter usability improvements on main Resources page

Would like to link to Software Discovery from Resource page

Resource Pages consider button text [Get Started with OOKAMI] maybe just [Get Started] [Get a Project/Allocation/Credits] etc. ?

• Task 6: What is an allocation? What types of allocation projects can you apply for? How do they differ from one another?
  Interview notes here

Had to work a bit to figure exactly what an allocation is.

Found the Project types page. Loves the table.

Jumped to the Credit exchange.

Exchange calculator was challenging to operate for him, Didn’t register that it was an input field.

Didn’t understand what units is, and how to convert.

In the.Comparison table:
Project duration: The “or” is on the second line and gave David felt like it was a bit discouraging to him who doesn’t have a grant

“Supporting grant duration or 12 month consider” consider. “12 month or (supporting) grant duration”

• Task 7: Where would you go to find the definition of an unfamiliar term or phrase used in ACCESS?
  Interview notes here
  
  

Check Support > Knowledge Base > Q&A Bot

[Login 54:45 issues]

• Task 8: Where can you go for help to use the ACCESS system?
  Interview notes here
  
  

Start in Support, try Q&A Bot > asked “I lost my phone and my dup app, who do I Reset Duo mfa? >

Directed him to “open a ticket”

Ticketing system:

• Appreciates examples in “Does you problem involve and ACCESS Resource (e.g. Delta, Expanse, Stampede) because he was forgetting what ACCESS Resource was but recognized those names.

• Liked Keywords

• When tried to view past tickets got message about ticket system account, and was able to get in that way, and he didn’t have any tickets

  Open

  

• Task 9: If you want to get involved and volunteer with the ACCESS community where would you go?
  Interview notes here
  ”Since I am already in Support I’d look in Community” If I wasn’t; not in support not sure where I’d go, support /community still stands out to him.
  
  

• Has used ask.ci, thinks of it as stack overflow for the research community, but forgets to search
  there when he is having trouble and wishes he would remember.

• David feels a lot in Support for him to dig into.

• David feel the secondary nav would be better with Hover

• When we want to his community profile he had chosen a lot of interests but no “Skills”
  
  

  Open

  

  He said it is hard to differentiate when something becomes a skill
  
  When looking at the match engagements David mentioned it would be great to see GitHub code samples. Also mentioned running sample code could offer comparison of using in house resources vs ACCESS resources.
  
  

• Support portal can add some text to differentiate skills vs interest.

• Task 10: What’s the first step to get started using ACCESS?
  Interview notes here

From what David has gathered he expects it is to “Get an Allocation.”

Allocations > Request an allocation > Explore

Task 11: Please review this page and suggest any additions or deletions.
https://access-ci.org/get-started/for-programs-organizations/
Interview notes here

Intro helped when he read closely but didn’t immediately feel like he belonged to this persona, was looking for the word support, or "supporting other people's research" .

David compared some persona landing pages side-by-side. Didn’t see the value in having multiples - because

they seemed really similar and he didn’t; fit clearly into one.

”Are there tools available to run projects” Can be worded better.

• Task 12: What type of HPC resources are your stakeholders looking for?
  Interview notes here

1. Interactive Analysis Users – This group primarily works with 3D and 2D imagery in an interactive environment. It includes:

   • Neuroscientists & Biologists using 3D visualization tools like FSL and Slicer for brain scans and biological imagery.

   • Astronomers working with 2D image processing software like IRAS.

   • Command-line users who run quick, iterative analyses, generating new visual outputs from text-based commands.

   • This interactive approach is preferred by most faculty and students due to its hands-on nature.

2. Long-Running Job Users – These users require background computing for extensive data analysis. It includes:

   • Genomics & Data Sequencing Researchers analyzing large fastq datasets with custom tools.

   • Physicists running complex simulations, sometimes using vendor software on dedicated virtual machines with MPI for job distribution.

   • They need systems that allow them to start a process, disconnect, and receive results later.

Some researchers have unique infrastructure needs, and the team provides support to help them optimize their workflows.

• Wrap up, thank you