Streamlining ACCESS-CI Resource Contributions: Human-Centered Integration of Science Gateways and Other Resources into the National Cyberinfrastructure

In this project, we address a persistent and critical challenge in the field of cyberinfrastructure (CI): effectively integrating diverse resources, particularly those provided by science gateways (SGs), into the ACCESS-CI ecosystem. ACCESS-CI is a national collaboration that offers advanced CI services to the scientific community. Despite the promise of ACCESS-CI as a unified infrastructure, many SG administrators and CI resource providers encounter significant difficulties navigating registration and integration processes. The complexity of the system, coupled with inconsistent workflows and insufficient user-centered design, imposes a significant cognitive load on users, resulting in inefficiencies and frustration that can lead to the underutilization of available SG and other CI resources.To address these issues, our team employed human-centered design (HCD) methodologies to systematically understand user needs, pain points, and interaction patterns. Through iterative design cycles involving user feedback, prototyping, and usability testing, we developed a novel badge-based interface system that streamlines user navigation, clarifies the steps required to integrate and utilize resources, and significantly reduces cognitive burden. By structuring tasks into modular, visually intuitive badge workflows, users can more easily track progress, understand dependencies, and complete resource integration tasks with greater confidence and efficiency.The result is not only an improved experience within ACCESS-CI, but also a flexible, extensible UI framework that can be applied to other complex CI ecosystems. This framework supports scalability across institutions and platforms. Ultimately, this work lowers technical barriers for a wide range of CI resource providers, including science gateway administrators. By making SG resources more accessible and easier to integrate into national CI ecosystems, this project enhances the scientific community's capacity to conduct data-intensive research, collaborate across disciplines, and accelerate innovation.