Cell Culture Large Scale Manufacturing Platform

Please note: As most of my work in this section is currently protected, I am not able to share all the details of my work. Please kindly reach out to me for more details.

Role	Lead UX Designer, UX Researcher
The Team	1 Product Owner 1 Tech Lead 6 Stakeholders from Hardware Team 2 Designers 1 UX Researcher / 1 PM
Duration	4 Months
Timeframe	June 2023 – Apr 2023
Tools Used	Microsoft Office, Jira, MS Teams, Powerpoint

CONTEXT: During innovation phase, the bioprocess platform has worked on a proof of concept, and prototype construction with a new modular type package in University. The Single Use and Integration System team has tested for the biologic in terms of handling feasibility. BioContinuum™ software team was tasked to design the automated system for the platform to enable intensification process.

PROBLEM STATEMENT: Media preparation is a core operation within the biomanufacturing facilities. It is conventionally viewed as critical but non-value added, as it traditionally involves a series of labor-intensive and time-consuming batch cultures, and an imbalance effort between labor, footprint and multi-step workflows that are susceptible to contamination. Complexity lies within scheduling and delivery of media.

Design Thinking Process

1. Research –  Proof of Concept review | Stakeholder Interviews | Knowledge Transfer
2. Define – Workshops with the team to define software specification questions
3. Plan – Plan alpha trials | Interview Scripts | Moderate Interviews | Notetaking | Report Out
4. Ideate – Concept ideation | Wireframes | Mockups | High fidelity mockup | Prototype
5. Concept Test – User Testing | Qualitative & Quantitative Interviews | Alpha trials  
6. Change in Project Direction – Design Review Meeting | Pivot outcome

1. Discover

Since the Innovation team was the first team that worked on this and the Process and Automation Delivery team will now inherit the project,  the PAD team spent first few quarters attending knowledge transfer meetings between the teams: 

In addition, our organization also had to conduct technical assessment of viable solutions and whether the proposed automated system will be adopting the brand new technology.

2.1 Define

From our research, we were able to conclude the following: 

At this stage, the team was only ready to test the concept and there were different directions we could take. However, we did not have enough data points to inform us on which route to take to further mature the development of this system. 

So, I scheduled multiple workshops with Product Management, System and Application Teams to align on our understanding on the points above, then collaboratively developed a series of questions we wanted to present to our customers. This was when we were able to finalize on research objectives. 

2.2 Research Plan

After we aligned with respective stakeholders on our research goals, we moved forward with planning our research: 

1. List of Sw Requirements: Given we have limited time to collaborate with customers, we needed to devise a focused list of ACE software features we wanted to validate 
2. A/B Testing: we agreed that we would still test the Proof of Concept (which already has overall features part of ACE), and in addition present an ACE V1.0 concept  to see if there were differences 

2.3 Material Preparation

• After we determined that this would be a concept test, we determined the logistics for research plan:
  1. Was this going to be in-person or remote? 
  2. Was this going to be moderated or unstructured?
  3. What features will we prioritize for testing? 
  4. What resources / materials do we need to prepare for testing?
     
• Once logistics were identified, I proceeded to prepare all materials necessary for both onsite and remote executions, and also moderator guides for Product Management team to utilize in case I was not available.
  1. The moderator guide was also critical to ensure that all testing were administered in an unbiased manner, so that we can collect objective data points from our end users 

3. Ideate: Software Delivery

Given this was going to be an A/B testing, some prototyping effort was required to develop end-to-end Control Platform experience against current Foundation. I leveraged the Bio4C UI kit and design pattern standards to create an end-to-end prototype. The prototype was aligned with the rest of Control platform, and included basic monitoring functions reflecting hardware requirements, interactive designs for process controls, and layout and navigation between sub-modules. Additional collaboration with system teams and hardware experts to develop new UI assets reflecting hardware requirements

4 Concept Test Execution

7 large biopharmaceutical companies interviewed (up to 18 interviewees) participated in an unstructured interview. Participants provided feedback on usability and general expectations of software requirements in 1~2 hour session.  

The high level goal was of the concept testings was to:

Data Collected: (1) SUS for the entire system (2) Logged observations, issues, and expectations regarding the software

5. Concept Test Finding

Once the notes were completely taken, I compiled insights into a sharable PDF format (powerpoint) originally, and led multiple discussions with the SDL, System Architect, Tech Lead and Product Management Lead.  We collectively synthesized the data points to resolve the questions we were able to, and highlighted the outstanding topics to be followed up.  The results were also shared to the System Team, and I represented the software team to report on these updates during the Sponsor meeting.  

6. Pivot

We presented our findings to sponsors during a gate review meeting. As a conclusion and synthesis of the data points, it was decided that the project will not pass the gate and will be further investigated prior to official development 

Conclusion:  The result significantly influenced the strategic directions of the project, and it was one that project team members were mostly content with, it gave the team the confidence of admitting the fact that the technology is not mature yet, and will not simply be ready to embrace this new tech until it is fully mature in the industry.  This meant a huge cost-savings for the company to avoid further investment in areas with low ROI.

Lessons Learned

• Early engagement of software and technical team was immensely helpful in bridging teams together in understanding technical constraints and platform strategy.  
• Big picture thinking was nuanced and hard to describe without a paper prototype, and putting a mockup in advance to concept test with customers facilitated many critical discussions 
• Innovation is challenging when industry is not mature yet, customers are reluctant to accept new technology until most big players have adopted it