A new paradigm for user support and software tools

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) provides Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observers with a suite of software tools as well as expert human support throughout the investigative process including the development of the idea to propose, implementation of the observations and analysis of the resulting data. This approach has been used successfully throughout the HST mission and at other observatories as well. Despite this success, we find that this support strategy has its limitations: User support tools are not created with the complete investigative cycle in mind, for example, one target visualization tool is used for proposal preparation while another is used during data analysis. In addition, expert knowledge cannot be easily captured and made available to users and software tools. In this paper we define a new paradigm and discuss how it has been enabled by advances in information processing. We argue that this approach will lead to better science and other long-term benefits such as enabling of coordinated, multi-observatory observations, encouraging collaborative investigations and the sharing and reuse of tools between observatories.