connecting physical and digital storage for scientists

USER PROBLEMS

• Other available solutions are overly complex and demanding

• Tracking sample locations in Excel increases the chances for errors

• Difficult to understand where samples should be stored in relation to other sample types

goals

In order to be successful, this project should aim to do the following for both UX and business outcomes:

• Make it easier to understand a sample's life cycle and its corresponding locations

• Among our customers, reduce dependence on Excel as a tool for tracking sample locations

• Address feedback from sales lead about gap in product offering needed to boost subscription numbers

WHO IS THIS HELPING?

Our solution is focused on improving the work efficiency of two types of laboratory users:

Bench scientists

Bench scientists work in high throughput environments, with samples coming and going constantly. They need to be able to find a sample's location and status at any given time, and find current solutions to be onerous and too focused on those with development skills. Primarily, they perform sample receipt, assign locations, and check samples in and out of storage in preparation for work on samples.

Laboratory managers

These managers make sure their scientists are focused where they need to be by monitoring throughput and sample availability. They need a system that allows them to integrate multiple team member's work and establish consistent workflows, which can be challenging with available systems on the market. Key tasks include monitoring throughput of samples, availability and capacity of bench scientists, and configuring freezers.

THE PROCESS

CONDUCTING USER Research

Research began by evaluating the competition. There are two well known freezer management products on the market (Freezerworks and FreezerPro). Both offer powerful functionality and freezer tracking, but neither provide high level views of sample or project status, and require users to be deeply knowledgeable of the product.

After interviewing potential users and scientists with experience using these freezer management systems, we learned that these systems feels antiquated. Labs resist using them because they are overwrought with functionality and are highly complex. This left an opportunity to entice customers familiar with those systems with a more modern and simple take on freezer management functions. I believed that the design should focus on simple use cases that would add immediate value to scientists.

Mapping the IA

As this was to be a product sized add on to an existing tool, it was important to get an idea of how this would fit in the system. IA charts helped to visualize the potential system tie ins and give developers a head start on where they could do work to support these connections.

Visualizing the user flows

In order to ensure we were addressing the right problems and to build shared understanding, a set of user flows for common scenarios was created.

Shown below was the vision for assigning a location for samples that exist in the system. This would be a common task, especially for labs onboarding to the tool. Time and effort needed to onboard a new freezer management tool are massive, and can be a big barrier to adding new software to the lab. As such, we knew it was important to get it right.

Wireframing and concept testing

Early designs used for concept testing attempted to address an issue that several users brought up in our initial interviews - that there are no freezer management systems that have good spatial representations of a physical freezer configuration. This required an understanding of meaningful freezer dimensions which would prove difficult.

Additionally, this round of interviews surfaced a new consideration - maintenance. In the back of lab managers minds, there is a constant worry about what to do in the event of a freezer emergency. Samples are costly, and serve as a snapshot in time of a participant’s status that can’t be easily replicated. Effective maintenance and emergency planning would be crucial for peace of mind.

high fidelity evaluation

A second round of design evaluations was performed to test functionality within the main user scenarios. Primarily, this was around:

• freezer configuration

• finding a storage location for samples

• moving samples

• checking samples in and out of storage

From testing these designs, we found that users gravitated more toward measures around people and projects than a fully matching physical configuration. Users did not understand the heatmap concept that was applied to storage meant to show capacity in storage units. We learned that the more important physical representation issue was around where a freezer is and what it looks like - something that can be an issue for laboratories with lots of storage. While an internal mapping of a freezer could help in finding a storage location for new samples, there were more simple measures available that didn’t have the same scaling issues.

Further, we found that moving samples within the same box was better understood if using the same view as moving to another box. Instead of working on a solution that would embed moving controls within a single box view, users noted they would better understand moving if they had the box view duplicated side by side. This would become the basis for moving samples within all containers, and would help establish consistency in the process.

THE SOLUTION

Freezer management launched as new component of our Sample Manager system in early 2021. Immediately, it has garnered interest from a number of new organizations, and has led to several new sales and leads for the product.

providing guidance on available storage locations

Both scientists and their lab managers struggle with using Excel to find appropriate locations to store new samples. Our solution provides these users with a way to quickly see which type of samples are where, and how much capacity is available in these locations. Capacity visualizations, sample quantities, and complete visual hierarchies of physical freezers aid users in moving past the storage process to more important work. Additionally, high level capacity views allow lab workers to know where to move samples in the event of a downed or defrosted freezer.

quick annotation of storage actions and work events

Samples move in and around the lab quickly. Retaining accurate records of where they went and what happened to them often becomes of secondary importance due to demand on time. Our solution enables scientists to quickly document when samples left or entered storage, what was performed on them, and how much sample volume was used. These actions are accurately tracked in an audit log, thereby reducing the potential for error and increasing trust in the sample record.

Takeaways

Defer on high effort and infrequent tasks

There aren't many standardized layouts for freezers from lab to lab, and creating a digital freezer layout to match your physical freezer can be an intensive task. However, it is one that is infrequent. A lot of time was spent designing and refining a drag and drop interface to quickly build freezers. While this configuration is a pain point in other systems, it was not something that would get users to adopt the product given the infrequency. From a business standpoint, this could have been an opportunity to provide some Wizard of Oz functionality for the early clients and defer the configuration UI until there was a larger user base. This would have allowed us to spend more time on more common freezer management tasks.

NEXT STEPS

Integrating inventory and location with workflow tracking

Scientists want to seamlessly access samples from freezer locations and include that as part of their documented workflows to more accurately reflect the chain of custody and sample lifeline. Updates to storage solutions should investigate how sample check in and check out can be integrated into workflow tracking.

Personalize for labs

Providing users a way to categorize samples and locations that "belong" to them would better match how inventory locations are allocated in the lab. We learned that many scientists have areas in freezers that are unofficially "theirs" - inventory managers will look to keep samples categorized by person as well as project.

Coupling Sample registration and location assignment

Typically, scientists will put new samples in a storage location and document that on arrival. Due to existing limitations with our sample creation process, it’s not possible to do this in one step, meaning samples must first be registered in the system before they can be assigned a location in storage.