NOBUGS 2026

With the incorporation of more AI in software development, it is important to ensure user applications do not lose focus on the users and take into consideration user needs and workflows. AI can help with rapid development, but issues in consistency and predictable behaviours can arise without user review. There are a variety of ways we can incorporate user experience (UX) practices in the...

The Advanced Photon Source Data Management System (DM) now provides a web-based user interface. DM is responsible for managing experiment data for facility users by providing capabilities related to storage, access, transfer, metadata, and processing. Previously, users interacted with DM through a command line interface, Python API, or PyQt desktop GUI available locally on workstations at each...

In the context of operator interfaces (OPIs), EPICS has a mature ecosystem of desktop tools. In contrast, the adoption of web-based solutions remains low: existing approaches typically require desktop applications for OPI design, using the browser only at runtime, or demand JavaScript development from users. WEISS (Web EPICS Interface and Synoptic Studio) addresses this gap by providing a...

The recent rise in capabilities from AI systems has begun to change the way that user interfaces are developed, making it significantly easier for domain scientists to create their own applications, or for developers to rapidly construct applications in previously unfamiliar frameworks.

At the Advanced Light Source, the Photon Science Computing (PSC) group is systematically exploring the...

At the Australian Synchrotron (ANSTO) we are currently transitioning our user-facing GUIs towards native web interfaces, while retaining our established Qt-based engineering GUIs for staff and engineers. We deliberately separate engineering UIs, built for low-level device interaction, diagnostics, and maintenance, from user-facing web GUIs designed for day-to-day experiment execution....

BEC Widgets is a highly modular Qt-based GUI framework developed together with Beamline Experiment Control (BEC) at the Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institute. The main goal of the platform is to simplify the interaction between scientists and their experimental setup, so they can focus on the science with as little friction as possible.

At the core of the system is the modular...

The first phase of the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) was completed in 2025. HEPS now offers 14 public beamlines and one optics test beamline, covering a broad range of research areas. HEPS calls for experimental proposals from researchers worldwide. The proposal management process encompasses a comprehensive sequence of stages: submission, multi‑tiered review, beamtime approval, scheduling,...