Broad Institute Terra Atlas

Project Overview

Terra Atlas began as a hackathon project to address researchers’ frustration with limited time to share their work. After conducting pre-hackathon surveys, we designed a simplified, repository-like tool to streamline research sharing. The project won first place and later evolved into a core feature of Terra, a Broad Institute platform.

During my internship, I worked on integrating our project into Terra's Sharing Workspace to solve broader challenges, allowing researchers, funders, and external collaborators to view research updates more easily, despite the previously complex process.

Roles:

UX Designer

Team:

Computational Biologist (3x)

Design Manger

Impact:

Integrated into design team’s roadmap for Terra

1st place BroadHacks Winner

Tools:

Figma

Scope

The Problem

During the early stages of our problem discovery phase at BroadHacks2024, we surveyed researchers and found that many wanted to share updates about their latest work but struggled to do so due to limited time and the cumbersome nature of existing processes.

Outcome

We addressed this by creating Broad Institute Atlas, a lightweight tool designed to make it faster and easier for researchers to share their progress. After winning first place at the hackathon, my design manager saw potential in our project to address similar challenges within Terra, a key product of Broad’s Data Sciences Platform. In Terra, researchers, collaborators, and funders outside the Broad Institute wanted to view research updates within Terra workspaces,