The previous search interface returned all data matching the search term thereby providing a comprehensive but non-specific search. As the data volume has grown this needed to be improved. For example, for a ‘diabetes’ search, users are typically looking for traits matching ‘diabetes’, however, this search also retrieved records containing publication data. Feedback from users indicated this was sometimes confusing. The new search interface was designed after analyzing query patterns from our logs, collating feedback from users during training sessions and combining rapid prototyping with user testing. The new search interface is designed to provide more intuitive access to the most relevant results, according to expected querying behaviour. The improved GUI retrieves ‘diabetes’ as a list of traits containing the term ‘diabetes’, e.g. ‘gestational diabetes’, ‘diabetes mellitus’ and ‘type ii diabetes mellitus’ and facets now show the search result context-trait and publication in this case (Figure 3A). New trait, variant, publication and study pages allow the user to access structured information providing detail and context that were previously unavailable. For example, users could select the trait “diabetes mellitus” (Figure 3B)
