PAT Raman Spectroscopy
| Role | Lead UX Designer |
| The Team | 1 Product Manager 1 Lead Developer 1 Junior Designer (Intern) |
| Duration | 4 Months |
| Timeframe | Sep 2021 – Jan 2022 |
| Tools Used | Figma, Empathy Map, MS Teams, Microsoft Project |
CONTEXT: In July 2020, Merck advanced it’s bioprocess portfolio through the acquisition of Resolution Spectra Systems. ProCellics™ Raman Analyzer enables real-time monitoring and control of biomanufacturing processes. By collecting biological and chemical information of complex liquid media, Raman spectroscopy is a non-destructive analytical technique providing chemical fingerprint of the sample by molecule differentiation. As part of integration efforts with the Bio4C™ Software Suite, the software delivery team was tasked with the mission to:
- Redesign the software according to Bio4C branding guidelines
- Introduce white mode
- Improve overall usability
PROBLEM STATEMENT: Some end users may have a preference to use software in white mode and dark mode takes some time to adjust, it was originally developed with developers in mind, but actual users typically are using the application in a brightly lit room. As a recently acquired software, the graphical user interface does not adhere or comply to the current guidelines.
Design Thinking Process
- Research – Understand product offerings | Feedback from CS | Feedback from current internal users
- Define – Workshops with the team | Align on technical feasibilities
- Ideate & Design – Concept Ideation | Wireframes | Mockups | High fidelity mockup | Prototypes
- Test – User Testing | Qualitative Interviews
- Deliver – Specifications with PO | Developer Handoff | Quality Assessment
1. Research
Prior to jumping into design solution, the team first spent 3 weeks to research and understand the product
Stakeholder Interviews: Together with the Junior Designer, we interviewed stakeholders to learn about the current product offerings, the target persona, context of use, and task analysis.
User Interviews: We then interviewed 3 current users who are part of applications team. The interview was conducted through contextual inquiry format, where they were able to walk us through the key modules they used.
2. Define
Empathy Map: We created an empathy map to synthesize user research insights, delineating what our end users see, hear, say, think, hear, and do.
We conducted an affinity mapping of all the items we observed, and highlighted key patterns.
After affinity mapping of empathy map, we were able to validate the following pain points:
- Information hierarchy
- Dark mode indeed impacts perceived usability
- Confirmed that the overall user journey is meeting user expectations
3. Ideation
We clarified with the Product Team that the scope will be mainly focused on white mode version, rather than fully redesigning the user experience and journey map.
Because of this, the ideation scope was reduced, heavily following the existing design. Where instead, main priorities where visual changes.
We identified the key screens requiring redesign, and used the Bio4C UI Kit to update the each element, component, and key modules. Leveraging the redesign opportunity, we also improved the user flows of some functionalities. We delivered wireframes and mockups for a total six key landing pages, and created a small design library for the developers to use with all the reusable components.
4. Test – User Interviews
For certain graphical elements, I tested the design concepts with our internal users. For instance, the “project”, “process” and “batch” definition followed a specific hierarchy, the conceptual design of a collection of paper, and a set of papers in a folder was validated and helped validated the understandability of each icon.
5. Deliver
To facilitate the handoff for developers, I rearranged the high-fidelity mockups and documented specific behavior in Figma. I scheduled a few synchronization meetings to ensure that the mockups understood
Lessons Learned
Some research was better than no research. Although we were not able to conduct a full deep dive to research customers as the project brief was mainly on white mode redesign, a brief and short research with a few end users were still able to inform team. For example, the empathy map was a useful exercise to contextualize user experiences in a comprehensive manner and foster discussion on major pain points, especially on the information hierarchy and architecture. In addition, graphical components were tested before deciding on the iconography, which also helped validate some ideations proposed throughout the design iterations.
- 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 w orkflows
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.