Cellicon® Cell Retention System

Role	UX Coordinator, UX Researcher, UI Peer Reviewer, Vendor Manager, Project Manager
The Team	2 Product Managers (1 Sw, 1 System) 1 Software Design Lead 1 Tech Lead 3 Stakeholders from the Hardware Team (Systems and Applications) 2 UX Designers 1 Project Manager
Duration	12 Months
Timeframe	Aug 2020 – Dec 2022
Tools Used	Sketch, InVision, Microsoft Project, Pen and Paper

CONTEXT: The Cellicon® Cell Retention Solution consist of a filtration assembly and controller designed for perfusion processes to achieve high cell densities and throughput. It is installed with the Bio4C™ ACE control software and available at different scales, and designed to improve flexibility and intensify upstream processes by removing spent media, and retaining high numbers of viable cells.

I contributed to leading coordination efforts of designing the control and automation software, designed to optimize bioprocess and facilitate adherence to regulatory compliance. It meets the needs by offering robust monitoring and control services for unit operations.

PROBLEM STATEMENT: This is the first of it’s kind solution amongst ACE’s portfolio to facilitate process-scale solution. The software enables both automatic processing through recipes and manual processing. The solution is the first within the program to be able to connect with other bioreactors.

The challenge was to create a brand new experience, while ensuring continuous value delivery and minimizing time to market, also establish the UIUX of this system as state-of-the-art platform library for future references.

There was no initial UX or Proof of Concept for reference.

Design Output: See ACE Datasheet

Design Thinking Process

Discover – Understand product offerings | secondary research from SMEs
Define – Workshops with the team | Align on control terminologies and features for development with UX consultants | Platform teams to define Foundation concepts
Ideate & Iterate – Concept Ideation | Wireframes | Mockups | High fidelity mockup | Prototypes
Deliver – Handed off design assets to development teams
Test – Alpha Trials | Field Study (Ethnography)
Iterate – Bug Fixes & Feature enhancements
Test – Beta Feedback

1. Discover

I arrived to the project a little late as a junior Designer. By the time I arrived, a UIUX team has been onboarded.The team was instrumental in mapping out the customer journey map for Cell Retention Solution project. They led many intense workshops and interviews with Process Solution subject matter experts, and the journey map enabled us to identify key pain point areas and areas to differentiate.

2. Define

While CRS was the pioneering system of BioContinuum platform, another mission of the platform was to ensure building blocks were designed and built in a modular, and reusable format. Much akin to Atomic Design framework, and lego blocks, the teams were tasked to divide solution build into multiple Foundation workstreams.

In collaboration with Product Owners, Product Managers, System and Tech Team, and System Architect, I supported the team to map out the product requirements, which subsequently led to the prioritization of backlog within these parallel Foundation workstreams. The development teams would collaborate together to plan for design iterations and sprints, and discuss most critical items to develop.

I enacted as the Product Owner of UIUX platform team to collect and understand requirements across Foundation teams, I also developed and finalized backlog requirements for Team Rey within the Planning Interval, managed the scope within the SOW, and created project plans, helped prioritization and UX roadmapping, overseeing the full end-to-end UIUX deliveries for the program.

3. Ideate and Iterate

Once the backlog was ready, Team Rey was ready to ideate. I coordinated and facilitated numerous workshops and iteration reviews to refine concepts for each sub-module.

For each Foundation workstream, I led additional meetings with System and Apps Team, Workstream Owners to further refine understanding
Once modules were well understood, Team Rey will prototype a series of concepts, with a few options
During each iteration (2 weeks), I would arrange design review sessions with stakeholders to collect feedback
In selected cases, where feedback was not straightforward or heavily debated, I supported Team Rey to conduct additional user testing
The designs would evolve from low-fidelity wireframes to high fidelity wireframes, whereby it was sufficient to be handed off to development teams

I supported the essential Project Management activities, to help ensure the projects were on track, remove impediments, and provide feedback by representing subject matter experts.

4. Deliver Design Concepts

To facilitate the handoff for developers, I ensured all Sketch files were accessible and viewable in InVision. To ensure timely termination of vendor relation, I also ensure Definition of Done was met, and all documentation were filed appropriately. By the end of the project, we delivered over 200 screens, supporting over 12 workstreams in 10 different teams.

5.1 Test – Alpha Trial Usability

After 1 year of development and integration, we finally had a MVP available. I further contributed to the feedback collection process by planning and executing testings with internal customers (MSAT, Field Service, Commercial, SUIS).

I created instruction sheets and data collection worksheets for an unmoderated session, wherein 8 participants completed end-to-end workflows for CRS, this included both on-site and remote testings. Participants provided feedback on both system performance and usability, and I collected SEQ, SUS, and other qualitative observations as they walked through each scenario.

The output of the study enabled us to benchmark the state of usability for ACE, uncover usability issues, and high-priority improvement areas required to be fixed before it is ready to be presented to the customers.

See sample report slides on the right.

5.2 Test – Field Study (Ethnography)

Complementing alpha interviews, I conducted an in-depth field study to highlight UI issues, particularly with respect to the execution of delivery and keyboard experience.

The keyboard issues were not anticipated during prototyping phase, and resulted in immense difficulties. These were issues that could not have been uncovered during the unmoderated remote sessions (as participants were using it with their mouse and keyboard).

I recorded many videos, and documented the pain points in great detail. This enabled the Product Manager and Product Owner of teams to understand critical issues that might render system unusable.

See sample slides from report below:

6. Iterate – Bug Fixes and Feature Enhancements

The outcome of both alpha trials and field study revealed:

Overall performance issue with many bugs that has yet been fixed within the main control page and alarm functionalities.
Fundamental keyboard experience issues as a result of technical limitation
Key improvement opportunities in a few Foundation modules, particularly in recipe creation workflow, user management, data management and process control workflows

The Product team then leveraged insights collected from this exercise to prioritize and classify issues to be fixed for the first release, minor or patch release. Development teams then came all hands on deck to fix bugs for R1 as first priority, and for the workstreams that had additional capacity, they eventually picked up feature enhancements and improvements for upcoming releases.

7. Test – Customer Interviews

Once the Product Management team deemed the software to be ready for Beta, we finally conducted a final interview with a large biopharmaceuitcal company. The software ended up receiving positive feedback regarding workflows for setting up the processes such as zero-adjustments, they particularly called out the priming workflow as being intuitive.

“Clean, organized, intuitive”

Of course, additional areas for improvement were identified as well, for example, certain functionalities had delayed reactions, users thought it was broken due to the indication, the keyboard does not automatically appear itself, and the trends are not as useful as intended. Ultimately, the results allowed the project to push through the subsequent Gate review, and was approved by Leadership for launch. In May 2023, the project was officially launched in the market.

Lessons Learned

Design and developing teams were working in silos which resulted in inconsistent and poor quality implementation, the actual implementation did not match up with InVision files provided. The program would not have had the capacity to review implementation unless a Designer was embedded and allocated to review implementation work.
Other ways to improve built-in quality:
- Embedding UI requirements as part of the acceptance criteria
- Additional peer review of implementation and feedback provision to developers
The software was developed in conjunction with another large process solution, developing reusable design components for different applications was a challenge, as requirements had to take multiple use cases into consideration, defining consistent UX patterns across software requires time, patience, expertise.
Stakeholder management was also a challenge, I learnt that one design will not be able to please everyone! So at some moment, to meet delivery timelines, I have to train myself to be in the mindset of “letting go” and accepting the design state as-is, picking the battle for another day.
Most of the development occurred throughout pandemic, so on-site visits and testing were not always possible. We were unable to uncover critical touch usability issues and only found this too late after implementation. Early testing on site, with gloves, and on the SKID itself would have avoided a number of bugs related to touch usability.
The lack of Design System or UI kit also made it more time consuming as all designs had to be built from scratch.