In the previous blog post, I showed the importance of good UX design to research organizations; and how the Design Thinking process created at Google Ventures helps users, designers and developers quickly narrow down a list of potential solutions, and focus on the best solutions. In this post, we’ll take a look at how the Pistoia Alliance’s UX for Life Science (UXLS) working group is applying these methodologies to solve research-related problems.
The UXLS working group draws its members from pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca, Amgen, Bayer and GSK in addition to numerous technology vendors. And these members have contributed case studies, templates and best practices from their own projects to create the UX for Life Sciences Toolkit. The toolkit was a finalist for this year’s Bio IT World Innovation Best Practice award.
UX for Life Sciences
At the heart of the Design Thinking methodology (and UX for Life Sciences for that matter) is this iterative three-step approach for problem solving that in many ways resembles agile and lean development (albeit without the code). Define the problem (via user research), prototype a solution, evaluate the solution with users and repeat. With each iteration you narrow your focus on the problem and get closer to achieving an optimal solution.
Within each of these activities the toolkit provides a host of best practices and templates geared towards helping life science companies apply Design Thinking principles in their projects.
User Research
Task Modeling – a process for understanding the tasks that the user is trying to accomplish. Similar to Alistair Cockburn’s Use Case modeling methodology.
Personas – a process for identifying different types of users, and identifying differences or similarities with the way in which they interact with a system/execute a process. For example, you might look at how a biologist performs a literature search during target selection and compare that to how a chemist performs a literature search to better understand the chemistry space for the target.
Contextual Inquiry – using direct observation of scientists as they work to better understand the business process and identify needs and opportunities for improvement.
User Interviews – using conversations with scientists to better understand the goals, process, and needs of scientists.
Jobs To Be Done – an approach to identifying high priority opportunities for improvement.
UI Design
Card Sorting – A process for getting direct feedback from users, designing user interfaces, prioritising opportunities, and understanding the user’s perspective.
Prototyping – a process for rapidly and economically turning ideas into prototype user interfaces.
Evaluation
System Usability Scale – metrics used to measure the usability of a product or service based on user feedback.
UX Metrics Using HEART – a set of metrics developed by Google for evaluating the usability of prototypes.
Read more of the UX for Life Sciences Series
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