Revamp of proprietary UX Methodology
Our digital design agency is known for it’s out-of-the-box thinking and cutting edge approaches to UX design in digitual products and services. Yet, our internal methodology Motivational UX was sitting on the shelf, not being engaged or utilized to its full potential. Due to senior level turnover, the leadership that had once galvinzed this process for teams and peers, was no longer there. User adoption with current team and leadership required revamping and making it usable and desirable and valuable for current needs of today’s fast moving and ever-changing needs in for the product, end-user and client, and in addition modern advancements in UX applications.
We compiled a team to spearhead this initiative. Our job was to design educational tools that could engage (phase 1) design + strategy practitioners and (phase 2) sales and clients.
My role with this work addresses two challenges: (1) how to engage and increase user adoption on the design team, and (2) how to make this design-led method applicable to strategy work for strategy engagement.
Responsibilities
UX Research
UX Audit
Workshop Design
Presentations to Stakeholders
Role
Senior Design Strategist and UX Researcher
Duration
August 2022-December 2023
The Problem
Bio-samples, aka living organism cells, are used in research across multiple laboratory sites, but the scientist’s process of obtaining them is a complicated.
The organization’s goal is to centralize bio-material data in one place, so they launched a new portal that combines inventory, search, and requests.
Further issues have been compounded due to different teams starting projects for this, lacking a unified plan and not considering what end-users really need, has led to siloed processes and confusion between research sites.
The Ask
Apply a Design Thinking and UX approach to gain a deep understanding of consumer needs, challenges, and behaviors.
Shift the focus of the technology, processes, and systems used in the online bio-materials catalog portal towards a more user-centered approach.
Enhance accessibility to bio-samples across the entire enterprise, and increased user adoption of the portal.
Approach Overview
A UX-driven process improvement of R&D portal:
Workshops (2) for Discovery and Ideation with project sponsors, team and the Steering Committee.
Semi-Structured Interviews with portal users (9)
Focus Group with Research Heads (3)
Usability Testing with portal users (8)
UX Audit of R&D Portal
Develop recommendations deck based on findings
Presentation to Project Core Team and Steering Committee
The Result & Impact
Boosted productivity in scientific research by enhancing search capabilities and minimizing workarounds to streamline processes.
Improved productivity in data collection by resolving usability issues with single site portal.
Achieved higher adoption rates across 1,000 users of the portal, and gained greater buy-in from stakeholders due to the improvements.
Enhanced portal scalability from comprehensive alignment with end-user needs.
De-risked business investments with end-user testing by ensuring that tech updates align with user preferences before extensive implementation.
