ENhancing sample tracking for clinical researchers

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Scientific progress is all about repetition of results and careful tracking. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of applications on the market that offer tools to do this while also offering modern design that users have come to expect from their consumer and, increasingly, their enterprise software. A recent industry survey of laboratory managers revealed that, for a staggering 82% of respondents, “ease of use” was the most important consideration for choosing a piece of laboratory software. This came above other items such as “adaptability” and “ability to meet user needs.” Given that usability may often be taken for granted, it said to me that there is a largely unmet need among the scientific community for tools that require less application specific knowledge and which may speed up the pace of scientific workflows.

Our team was tasked with building a new application to handle workflows specifically for clinical scientists doing sample management work. While we had a platform to build on for the basics of data management, the sample status and progress monitoring experiences were open for new solutions.

GOALS

Enhance collaboration among scientists and give them a better picture of their sample data and status over time
Attract customers who were in need of a light weight sample tracking system
Design a system that could take on expanded functionality in order to grow into a full fledged LIMS (Laboratory Inventory Management System)

WHO IS THIS HELPING?

Clinical SCIENTISTS

The bench scientist is the cog that keeps the machine running on daily operations within the lab. Due to the varying needs of the lab, their day may be spent doing anything from setting up equipment, troubleshooting instruments, reviewing documentation, processing samples, and logging samples.

Clinical RESEARCH managers

Team managers are the connective tissue for an ongoing project. They may often interface with other lab members to ensure that high standards are being kept for sample data entered into their systems.

TEAM DIRECTOR

The lab director is responsible for the quality of research at a macro level. They need to be in communication with the status of all aspects of their organization’s projects at all times. It’s on them to identify and resolve problems within the lab workflow, which may translate to changes in operating procedures and how laboratory software is used.

DESIGN PROCESS

CONDUCTING USER RESEARCH

Throughout the course of building this application, I assisted the team’s product manager with performing market and user research via surveys and interviews. We talked to scientists, managers, and directors from several different laboratories in order to hone in on common needs.

Our research led us to the conclusion that a focus on process tracking is a key element of a sample management tool that is often missing. In applications that have this, it are often implemented in such a way that it is a hindrance to lab work. As a result, many scientists continue to work in Excel and paper rather than learn a new system. My operating assumption is that, given that users spend the majority of their time using consumer websites and mobile apps, you should design with that in mind and try to incorporate some familiar principles in your enterprise design. Doing so can help break that resistance to adopting new technology in the lab. For competitive analysis, I evaluated Benchling, BSI Systems, and FreezerPro. For design inspiration on workflow tracking, I looked to Jira, Monday, Basecamp, and Trello.

REFINING OUR PRODUCT STRATEGY

Product strategy was helped through performing collaborative workshops that I ran with team members to define an MVP feature set tailored to the user types we were aiming to serve. These workshops allowed us to map our feature set to the user scenarios we wanted to support upon release. By assessing features by each action in a user flow, our team was able to assign these needs to phases (MVP, phase 2, and beyond) so that we had an idea of what we needed to focus on first.

Additionally, I worked closely with our team’s engineers to ensure our design plans were feasible, and were validated through in person and remote user tests before we began development.

Though we knew we wanted to surface prioritized work and work status, our team was unclear how best to do so. Leveraging inspiration from personal task management apps such as those listed above, I put together some wireframes to serve as a proof of concept and attempt to bring everyone on board with this vision. The black and white wireframes below are the first look at our workflow tracking system taking shape.

The design needed to:

Help lab workers prioritize their work
Quickly communicate sample status
Visualize the process of what has been and what needs to be done

With a convincing proof of concept, the rest of the team was now onboard with the task management direction. It was important to me that we, as a team, continue to build a shared understanding of where we were going. So, I knew it would be important to continue to bring the key team members into the design process.

With that in mind, I conducted a one hour “brain sprint” to further flesh out the design direction of this feature. Using an ultra condensed Google design sprint framework during the hour, we generated 37 sketches or ideas to consider, and voted on the winners and losers. We left having answered two key questions. One, that we knew we would first focus on a linear workflow, with no branching. Second, that we had to include views that would help our manager and director personas assess workload. It was a great success!

Brain sprint

Some of the many ideas generated during the hour

MVP workflow

Visualizing the MVP features needed to satisfy the most basic use case at launch.

All that remained was to bring the design to higher fidelity and validate further with some potential users. At this point, we had a long runway until release, so there was time to do a bit of iteration and run some remote tests. Using InVision and participants sources from Userinterviews.com, I ran five remote moderated user tests focused on building a workflow. Testing enterprise design is uniquely challenging. It can be difficult to mock up the complex data needed for real life scenarios, and finding qualified users is not as simple as a consumer application. The designs below show the prototype state that was tested. Among the learnings from these tests were that the steps to build a workflow were not in the expected order, and that users had difficulty with finding the workflow option in the menu once they wanted to begin one with samples selected.

Creating a workflow - step 1

Users can add samples to a workflow for easy tracking of their processing over time

Creating a workflow - step 2

At this stage, our users can begin to define the work that needs to be done and assign it to colleagues as needed.

Creating a workflow - step 3

Necessary metadata to capture about the workflow include notifications and location of samples.

Creating a workflow - step 4

The final step allows users to attach needed files such as SOPs (standard operating procedure) to a workflow.

A job in progress

Jobs in progress help users see what work has been done and what is left to do.

Many future improvements are planned for this workflow tool, including enhanced templating and versioning. It has been a delight to watch Sample Manager come together as we approach launch.

While the main focus of the application is the workflow tracker, other features that I designed for it include:

A dashboard that highlights prioritized work and sample throughput (see below)
A tool to design assays and sample types
User management and permissions pages

Dashboard

The dashboard ties together all of the data views and provides useful links for users to get back . to the most important work for them.

TAKEAWAYS

dealing with uncertainty

Ultimately, seeing this project through to an MVP release has given me valuable lessons in how to deal with product pivots and uncertainty in strategy. At times, it felt that the workflow feature was in danger because of either lack of clarity at the outset, or wider company strategy changes that could have drastically altered the product plans. However, the product manager and I were vocal in advocating for taking the product in a task management direction based on our research and feedback. While we would learn that our feature set at release needed more involving location tracking, I believe that our approach was the right choice compared to one that focused on the requests of a single potential client.

NEXT STEPS

Grow into a mature system

Sample Manager was released in Q1 2020, with a lengthy product roadmap. The long term vision for this product is one that will bring in more complex functionality to become a competitor in the LIMS space, which will allow us to target more mature scientific organizations. Our team has already implemented a freezer management addition to meet the needs of clients who want inventory and location tracking.