Drug Research Tool Redesign

The Brief

Redesign and migration of a well reputed drug research tool, used mainly in the preclinical phase of the drug R&D lifecycle.Improve and integrate with other tools in the company portfolio.

Approach technique: User Interviews, Focus Group, Requirements Gathering, Competitor Research, Documentation, Ideation Workshops, Usability Testing.

The Challenge

The project presented us with several interesting challenges:

1. Legacy product: the legacy product was very well reputed in the industry and clients as well as internal stakeholders were reluctant to migrate to new technologies.
2. Lack of previous research: no previous research was conducted; the feedback gathered was very scarce and mainly positive: people loved the product and for that reason they didn’t want a disruptive change.
3. Stakeholder resistance to change: Those inherent to the business: a small change in  behaviour could end up driving users down the wrong path in their research process.
4. Existing issues: still the product and the behaviour has a number of critical and other small issues which everyone agreed needed fixing as a matter of priority.
5. Scalability: product had divided the project in such a way that core modules would be analysed and redesigned first. The designs needed to be modular and flexible enough to include those modules in the future while keeping the new platform consistent.

The Outcome

1. Brand new designs for the new platform.
2. Proposal of a new, evolved, concept based on four core functional areas: searching, browsing, analysis and user tools.
3. Research and identification of potential visualisations for the analysis module

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The Process

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This project went of for one year so I am rethinking how to show the process and the techniques I applied.

The approach I followed varied significantly during the 9 months that I led the project at the UX level.This is because towards the end more effort was required in user research and validation and less on visual deliverables.

• Weekly meetings with the main stakeholders in the project.
• Utilisation of prototypes and designs as a storytelling tool for requirements and feedback gathering.
• Identification of the priorities and technical limitations.
• Different UX techniques were applied at each stage of the project, tailored to the corresponding requirements and the available resources.

Quarter 1: The kick-off

Ideation and Concept

Sprint 0 lasted 3 weeks, starting from when I joined the project until the first deliverable of the low level fidelity designs.

Being new to the project, I needed to work fast to get up to speed, while at the same time conducting some initial researchto understand the context and prepare the ground for user research once the first deliverables were ready.

Principles I followed:

1. Focus on quantity rather than quality.
2. Focus on and solve the big problems in those areas previously identified.
3. Interview stakeholders and internal users available.
4. Collaborate regularly with the head of the UX department in order to ensure we met the expectations on time.
5. Iterate to take low fidelity design to a higher level, ready to hand over to UI designers just in time for development.

Once the first low fidelity deliverable was approved, I started collaborating with my colleague, an Interaction/UI designer in the high fidelity to make  it ready for the dev team.

The development team used Scrum, so from this point onwards I had to managed two different work queues at the same time:

• one required for the next quarter
• and one with small incremental improvements and fixes for issues detected by analysts and solutions for new requirements added by tech.

High Fidelity for Core Modules

At the end of Q1 I introduced and presented the designs which showed the work developers would deliver by the end of Quarter 2.

It was also decided to conduct some internal user research, as we had an extensive editorial team, customer care and support, which were all very keen to collaborate.

So, I prepared the strategy and conducted the research with internal users and stakeholders which involved: .

1. Interview those members of the team involved in demos.
2. Assisting demos and webinars.
3. Surveys to internal users.
4. Group interviews with customer care and some editorial team members.
5. Feedback gathering sessions on the work performed to date.
6. Ideation workshops with team members in order to solve problems still not dealt with.

Quarter 2: Evolution of the Project

In order to provide support to the technical team and iterate on the designs as analysts and owners added new requirements and new modules were designed, we had to tackle three additional major challenges during this second phase:

1. We have designed keeping in mind business and technicals requirements, but due to time and resource constraints we haven’t kept in mind all users’s needs.
2. One of the new modules due by the end of Q2 needed integration with a new product ready to be launched.
3. A new technical team joined the project.

User Testing

User testing was required at this point of the project. Product was in charged of the screening while I prepared the protocol and the tools (research collaboration with the UX team). During the usability test the Interaction designer supported me assisting and taking additional notes. Data was collected at the end of the user testing during an affinity diagramming session.

Integrations

The integration with additional products required less UI work and more research and analysis, so we opened a new project in parallel in which I worked closely with an additional BA in order to come up with an appropriate AI, user flows and low fidelities consistent with the redesign and with the new product.

New Development Teams

In order to support both technical teams and keeping in mind that scrum events were too time consuming, the Interaction designer and myself decided to assist different teams. As the new team had just joined the project and the original team had more needs with regards to the handover as well as Interaction/UI changes, we decided to split the teams in a coherent manner. In order to keep a view of the big picture we still held regular daily briefings.

Communicating and Reporting

At the end of this phase I presented the designs for the new modules. The integration concept was handed over to the tech team. Additionally, a report with the outcome of the research was introduced to stakeholders including additional hypotheses to test, opportunities and improvements.

Quarter 3: Additional Final Set of Modules and Handover

At this point of the project we had already assembled a good number of assets and communication toolsand had established an efficient way of working (notwithstanding two different teams applying their own implementations of scrum, working in parallel in the same project).

Work at this point went very smoothly within the team and I focused mainly in designing new screens, putting in place the AI and user flows with BAs and product, which I then handed over to the Interaction designer.

Designs, the tools we used to communicate and the constant involvement of the UX team in the scrum events, reduced documentation waste to a minimum.

A new document with recommendations, hypotheses and next steps was put in place while I moved towards providing further support in User Research and Usability Testing in additional projects of the company portfolio.