Designing Nebula: A Revolutionary Microscopy Imaging Software by Starlyte Imaging

A Vision Brought to Life

In the ever-evolving landscape of microscopy, Starlyte Imaging has emerged as a pioneering force with the introduction of its cutting-edge software solution, Nebula. Designed to address the intricate demands of modern microscopy, Nebula offers a comprehensive suite of tools that enhances imaging capabilities, streamlines workflows, and provides unparalleled precision for researchers and scientists across various fields.

As the lead designer behind Nebula, our groundbreaking microscopy imaging software by us at Starlyte Imaging, I'm thrilled to share the story and design features of this project that has been a labor of passion, innovation, and meticulous attention to detail. Nebula isn’t just another software solution—it’s the culmination of countless hours of brainstorming, testing, and refining, all aimed at creating a tool that truly revolutionizes the way researchers interact with and visualize microscopic data.

From the outset, our goal with Nebula was clear: to create a software solution that would not only meet the needs of modern microscopy through UI, make a centralized hub to connect your computer to the hardware devices. This vision drove every design decision we made, from the underlying algorithms to the user interface.

Designing From the Ground Up

Microscopy is a very specific industry, and because of that, it has been a bit stagnant when it comes to creating cutting edge tools that are easy and intuitive to use. The user experience of microscopy of the past have been boot strapped together with duct tape by engineers solving a need. Its long been over due to take a UX approach to microscopy. Lets identify the personas. What we see are two types of users, the scientist and the hardware technician.

1. Scientists: This persona wants to go to their workstation, set up the rules for acquisition, review the images to see if they captured what they want and then save it to their local or cloud storage to be reviewed in another program like ImageJ. I wanted the UI to be dark, intrusive on the eyes. The scientist should see only the controls for setting up the acquisition order, the pictures coming in and where to save it.

2. Hardware Technician: This role is the person making sure the computer and the microscope along with all the other components are all talking to each other. Contrary to the scientist persona, the user is given a bright display. The technician would prefer to be in a bright room to examine why the machine isn't working properly or assembling a machine. They want to clearly be able to see the hardware drivers and how they are connected to the host. There should be no confusion whether you are in hardware management or configuration from the image acquisition aspect of Nebula.

Key Design Features of Nebula

1. Simple Intuitive Setups : I wanted to create a simeple setup for technicians. By creating and naming a setup, I start assign devices to ports. One click buttons to create a new profile for your hardware. One click buttons for laying out a Host, a drop down for ports and detecting your devices.

2. Visual representation to show devices and how your machine is communicating with those devices:

3. Drag and drop the acquisition order: One of the most exciting challenges we faced was ensuring that Nebula was going make the acquisition setup to be really easy and simple. Click on the category to open the settings panel and setup which wavelengths. Dragging the category up and down will tell the machine which process to go to next before moving to the next process. Obviously timelapse which is the 4th dimension has to be ordered last.

4. Real-Time Imaging: It was also really important for us to allow the user to see their acquisition as the camera was capturing. This can save the scientist the time of having to wait for the whole process to be done to ensure the subject is in frame. The user can stop the process and start again.

5. Easy capture saves and data management: With the massive amounts of data generated by modern microscopy, we knew that data management had to be seamless and robust. We designed Nebula to integrate effortlessly with cloud storage solutions, ensuring that data is not only secure but also accessible from anywhere. This feature was essential for facilitating collaboration, and we’re excited about how it’s helping researchers work together more effectively.

Bringing Innovation to the Lab

Working on Nebula has been a journey of constant learning and creativity. As a designer, there’s nothing more satisfying than knowing that the tools you’ve helped create are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Nebula represents a significant leap forward in microscopy imaging, and I’m incredibly excited about the impact it’s going to have on research around the world.

Nebula isn’t just a software solution—it’s a testament to what’s possible when you combine cutting-edge technology with a deep understanding of user needs. Every feature, every interface element, and every line of code has been designed with one goal in mind: to empower researchers to make groundbreaking discoveries.