Feasibility Study of Portal to Provide Knowledge about Higgs Boson to General Public and Experts

This thesis performs a feasibility study of a new web portal focused on the Higgs boson and its research. Since the particle discovery in 2012, the research has advanced greatly, while the general public is still struggling with under- standing the basic concepts of particle physics and the Higgs boson. A web portal that would automatically store and categorize all the released research publications and preliminary results in the Higgs boson domain does not exist. For the scientists, keeping track of the latest discoveries and current research is unnecessarily time consuming and complicated due to the lack of a unified database. For the general public, there is a lot of information about the Higgs boson available, but there is not a website dedicated to explaining the particle and its importance. The proposed “Higgs Boson Portal” aims to solve both of these issues. In the feasibility study, some fundamental terms surrounding the Higgs boson and CERN are explained. The current resources available and the two target user groups are analyzed. User personas and user stories are formulated and the requested features for the portal are noted. A possible technical realization of the portal is suggested. Wireframes for the essential features of the proposed portal are created and presented. The development of the portal is considered feasible and possible future plans are suggested.