Miniscope User Experience & Support
Using a UCLA Miniscope, or thinking about it? Tell us how it's going. Your answers help shape Miniscope guides, office hours, and training.
About this project
Making Miniscope hardware designs and software freely available is an important first step, but researchers also need support to put these tools to use. From assembling hardware and performing surgeries to collecting and analyzing data, the Miniscope workflow involves many steps, each with its own challenges. The difficulties researchers encounter can vary depending on their experience, available resources, and access to other Miniscope users.
The Miniscope User Experience & Support project collects feedback from the community to better understand these challenges and identify where additional support is needed. By checking in with users over time, we can learn how their needs change as they gain experience and use that feedback to improve our documentation, workshops, office hours, and other resources.
What we want to learn
We're interested in understanding:
- Getting started: Where are researchers in the process of using Miniscopes, and what makes it difficult to move forward?
- Experience and training: Which parts of the Miniscope workflow are most challenging or unfamiliar?
- Community support: Do researchers have access to other Miniscope users in their lab, institution, or region?
- Helpful resources: What kinds of documentation, training, troubleshooting, and community support would be most useful?
- The Miniscope community: Who is using Miniscopes, what are they studying, and which software tools do they use?
How we collect feedback
We use a short online survey to check in with current and prospective UCLA Miniscope users. Anyone can participate, whether or not they've attended a Miniscope workshop.
The survey asks about users' experience with Miniscopes, the stage of their work, the tools they use, and any challenges they're facing.
We also encourage users to complete the survey again as they make progress. These follow-up check-ins help us understand how users' needs change and where additional resources or support might be helpful.
The survey covers:
- Current stage: Whether you're exploring Miniscopes, setting up a system, collecting data, or analyzing results.
- Experience: Your familiarity with six steps of the Miniscope workflow, from hardware setup to data analysis.
- Challenges: What's currently making it difficult to move forward.
- Local support: Whether you know other Miniscope users in your lab, institution, or region.
- Software tools: Which calcium imaging analysis and behavior tracking tools you use.
- Research: The behaviors and experimental approaches you're studying.
- Background: Your career stage and country.
Results are shared as summaries, without names or contact information.
Share your experience
Using a UCLA Miniscope or thinking about getting started? We'd like to hear from you.
Whether you're assembling your first system, collecting recordings, analyzing data, or still exploring the technology, your feedback can help us improve the resources available to the community.
The survey is open to all current and prospective UCLA Miniscope users. You do not need to have attended a workshop.
If you've completed it before, you're welcome to check in again as your work progresses. Hearing how your experience changes is especially helpful.
What we've learned so far
Most people who have responded so far are still getting started: many are exploring the Miniscope or have a system they haven't set up yet. Data processing and analysis is the challenge people name most often. When asked to rate their experience with six steps of the Miniscope workflow, people gave the lowest ratings to combining behavioral and imaging data. One in four respondents don't know any other Miniscope users in their lab, institution, or region, which makes online resources like the forum and office hours especially important.
These findings come from initial responses collected July–September 2026 (n = 13) and will be updated as more users participate. Your check-in helps make the picture clearer.
How we're using the feedback
The goal of this project is to make Miniscope resources more useful and accessible by responding to the needs of the community.
Feedback helps us:
- Improve documentation: Develop and update guides for workflow steps where users need more help.
- Plan office hours: Focus discussions and troubleshooting on commonly reported challenges.
- Improve workshops: Adjust training content to better address users' experience levels and needs.
- Support new users: Identify where additional guidance would be useful as researchers move from setting up their system to collecting and analyzing data.
- Evaluate resources: Check in with users to understand which resources they've found helpful and what could be improved.
As more feedback comes in, we'll continue updating the results and using them to guide improvements to Miniscope resources and support.