Enhancing research discovery in mental health studies with Harmony at University College London

I got the opportunity to work with Harmony on the Search and Results Representation Challenge. Harmony is a platform that helps researchers discover and compare complex meta-data across different academic studies. This project is a collaboration between University College London (UCL), University of Ulster, and Fast Data Science, funded by ESRC.

My role focused on improving the discoverability of study meta-data, ensuring researchers can search, filter, and interpret results more effectively while working towards integrating Harmony with other data discoverability platforms.

Problem Statement:

Researchers and students struggle with finding, understanding, and organizing academic studies efficiently. Existing platforms provide cluttered results, lack smart filtering, and make it difficult to compare or extract key insights from research papers.

Value Proposition:

For: Researchers and students looking for a more structured and accessible way to explore academic studies.

Dissatisfied with: The time-consuming and overwhelming process of searching, reading, and managing research using existing platforms.

Due to: The lack of intuitive tools for refining search results, summarizing complex studies, comparing findings, and organizing research effectively.

Harmony aims to provide an improved research discovery experience by enhancing search relevance, simplifying information access, and enabling better ways to explore and manage academic studies.

Goals:

• Improve the research process by making it easier to find and filter relevant studies.

• Simplify information access through structured insights and intuitive presentation.

• Enable effortless comparison between studies to identify key differences and trends.

• Support collaboration by allowing users to save, organize, and share research.

My Role: Currently working with Head UX Researcher Rachel Holland, Jay Duggad, and the Harmony in collaboration with University College London and Ulster, handling multiple UX aspects, including research, UI design, and overall user experience improvements to enhance research discoverability.

Users: The core users of Harmony are researchers primarily working in mental health-related fields. Additionally, data managers and professionals handling mental health meta-data use the platform to discover, compare, and analyze study meta-data efficiently.

User Scenario:

User: A postgraduate student working on a thesis needs to find reliable, high-impact studies on a specific topic.

• Search for research but struggle to filter out irrelevant papers.

  
  

• have multiple tabs open and manually compare findings, slowing their progress.

  
  

• need summaries to quickly assess whether a paper is relevant.

  
  

• want to organize and share selected studies with their research group.


Breaking Down User Problems into Insights


Problem: Searching for relevant papers takes too long.

Insight: Users need better filters and AI-assisted search to refine results faster.


Problem: Reading full papers is overwhelming.

Insight: Summarization tools can help users grasp key findings quickly.


Problem: Comparing studies manually is frustrating.

Insight: Side-by-side comparison tools can simplify the process.


Problem: Organizing research is scattered across multiple tools.

Insight: A structured workspace for saving and sharing research can improve workflow. UI Design(in progress):