Usage Patterns of Cloudlab Users


CloudLab (https://cloudlab.us/) is a testbed facility that allows researchers to build clouds of their own. The platform has thousands of users and it represents a substantial investment from the National Science Foundation. In this research project, our lab provides user research expertise to help CloudLab developers better understand their users and their needs. This work will help maximize funders' investment and it will improve CloudLab users' experience.

Serving as consultants to the CloudLab development team, we are conducting interviews and contextual inquiries as well as leveraging log data to develop actionable insights. Our goals are not only to address users' pain points but also to ensure CloudLab supports reproducible research, making it a more valuable scholarly tool.

We have multiple threads ongoing in this research. To understand users' challenges, we are investigating how new users learn the CloudLab interface and what occasions are most frustrating for practiced users. To facilitate reproducibility, we are studying how CloudLab supports the artifact evaluation process. 

To learn more about CloudLab, visit the website, its documentation, or read a paper about its design and use. 
A screenshot of three connected nodes and the dropdown menu that appears when right clicking on a node. The mouse hovers over an option for rebooting a node.
Cloudlab users construct clouds of their own to run research experiments.

Publications


Cultivating Altruism Around Computing Resources: Anticipation Work in a Scholarly Community


Johanna Cohoon, Kazi Sinthia Kabir, Tamanna Motahar, Jason Wiese

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, vol. 7(CSCW2), 2023


Closing the Gap: Aligning Developers’ Expectations and Users’ Practices in Cloud Computing Infrastructure


Tamanna Motahar, Johanna Cohoon, Kazi Sinthia Kabir, Jason Wiese

The Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC) Conference, 2023


Finding Time through User Research


J. Cohoon, K.S. Kabir, T. Motahar, J. Wiese

M. Heroux, Code Complete and More: Emerging Efforts to Improve Software Quality [Symposium], PASC'23: Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing Conference, Davos, Switzerland, 2023 Jun 26





Follow this website


You need to create an Owlstown account to follow this website.


Sign up

Already an Owlstown member?

Log in