evolution of User Experience for life sciences - Drug Discovery ...

By Jacek Ziemski,Simon Fortenbacher,James Hoeksma, Jan Taubert, Roger Attrill, Paula de Matos,Andre Richter andJulie Morrison

Drug Discovery World Winter 2019/20 59

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evolution of User Experiencefor life sciencesSince 2017 we have seen the slow and steady adoption of User Experience(UX) within the life sciences. User Experience is an evidence-based designprocess that centres on the behaviours and needs of users. The clear benefitsof UX offered in the retail and consumer sectors have been slow to percolateto other more complex sectors such as the life sciences. As the benefits ofadoption of UX come to be realised, we see steady and strong growth in theR&D life sciences sector.

The retail and consumer services sectorshave long recognised the value of UserExperience. This early realisation and

long-term investment can be seen by their higherlevels of maturity over other sectors in The DesignFrontier report, which surveyed more than 2,200companies compiled by InVision1. The ‘retail andconsumer durables’ sector have a combined level 4and 5 maturity of over 24% in comparison to thehealth and pharmaceutical industry which cur-rently stands at a combined level 4 and 5 maturityof 14%. Especially in retail, the correlation between a

solid user experience and ROI is direct and easy todemonstrate through unambiguous measures suchas conversion rate, and it is simple to trackimprovements through A:B testing; in fact, themost successful consumer companies today haveadopted user experience as a core component oftheir business. In 2000, Amazon’s founder JeffBezos noted that: “In our first year we didn’t spend

a single dollar on advertising… the best dollarsspent are those we use to improve the customerexperience.”2

Such correlation becomes more tenuous in enter-prise environments and particularly in life science,where historically the users of the applicationswere not the end consumers, but scientists, statisti-cians, analysts and managers. Within this environ-ment the ROI of any UX activity is harder to cal-culate definitively, as many other factors come intoplay between the user experience of any applica-tion and the commercial success of the company.However, by 2017 most life science companies

were beginning to recognise that the inherent com-plexity of their industry was being compounded byapplications and devices that lacked attention to‘usability’, and that efficiency savings and processimprovements could result from some investmentin this area3. This also came about at a time whenemployees were becoming acutely aware of thevast chasm of experience between their consumer

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technology at home and that provided in theirplace of work.Many large life science companies began recruit-

ing ‘usability consultants’ with the aim of improv-ing their applications but, partly due to lack ofknowledge of this space and partly to the ROI notbeing proven, did not invest heavily enough forreal benefits to be realised. Instead, these UXresources focused on ‘low hanging fruit’ – quickwins with short-term gains, often focusing on aes-thetic improvements rather than addressing morefundamental design issues that were impacting theuser experience of scientists. This proved to be adouble-edged sword; on one hand these efforts didprovide solid case studies that demonstrated a levelof ROI and paved the way for more significantinvestments going forward, but on the other handreinforced a perennial misconception of UX, that itis all about the user interface (UI); the layout,colours, fonts and images displayed to users whileinteracting with an application or device.This misconception became a challenge to these

small UX teams:

l As UI design tends to happen later in a project,UX resources were not engaged until much later,often after the design decisions that most impact theuser experience had been made and implemented.l Project teams were reluctant to take a step backand consider the core goals, needs and expecta-tions of users (and the user research required tounderstand this), concerned that doing so wouldadd to their timelines or budgets.

l UX was relegated as an aesthetic inconveniencerather than a core measure of success.l Many opportunities to improve task flow,reduce errors and eliminate training were missed asthe value of UX was not fully realised.

Although the full potential of UX had not beenrealised by this time, these early project interac-tions paved the way for further expansion andadoption of UX. UX practitioners now not onlyneeded to practise UX, but they needed to educatethe wider organisation on the definition of UX andprovide them a common vocabulary.

Evolution of UX since 2017Despite different adoption rates of UX within dif-ferent companies, it would seem that the originalhype associated with UX functions in industry hasslightly declined since 2017. This is mainly due tothe transition from an early adopter phase to pro-duction use in our industry. Having overcome ini-tial challenges of establishing UX functions, UX isnow becoming part of departmental structure andstrategic planning of most companies. Nevertheless, the value of UX is not always obvi-

ous. Education of colleagues in UX techniques andbest practices through formal training workshopshas shown only limited results. On the other hand,we have found that UX has shown the most valuewithin the company when it was applied to con-crete high-impact projects. On these projects, col-leagues could directly experience the value andcontribution of UX on their own systems. This

Figure 1UX maturity in January 2019

for 13 biopharmaceutical, agri-food, academia and

industry-associated softwarevendors using the Norman

Nielsen scale

60 Drug Discovery World Winter 2019/20

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leads to repeated requests from these colleagues tothe UX functions. Furthermore, showcasing theseprojects as case studies attracts more potential cus-tomers. Building on this project success, eventuallymost exposure for UX will be generated by partic-ipation across important projects with company-wide visibility.The learning process is not just on the side of

colleagues, but also for UX practitioners while theyget exposed to even more and wider contexts with-in their companies. This comes with several chal-lenges, as companies expect UX practitioners toadapt to new domains or educate themselves in lifescience topics such as genetics, bioinformatics etc,to be able to fully leverage the potential of UX inthese tasks. Such adaptation processes will not stopin the future as new methods and technologies, egCRISPR DNA sequences, emerge and the complex-ity of the data and system landscape in life sciencesincreases. As demand for UX has increased in this sector,

the small UX teams of 2017 had to work out howto scale UX in enterprise organisations. The needfor a UX toolkit to allow colleagues to self-serveand allow them to learn the basic UX methodologyand terminology has been a key factor in the steadyadoption rates of UX. In order to pool resourcesand save time, the Pistoia Alliance User Experiencefor Life Sciences4 (UXLS) community built theUXLS toolkit5 (released in February 2018).As demand for UX has grown, how organisa-

tions have taken that user-centric culture on boardcan vary. From letting it act as the life-blood of anorganisation to just one or two vital organs receiv-ing focus. Evaluating the ‘UX maturity’ of anorganisation is one way to explore this variation,and this is just what the UXLS undertook recently.A detailed UXLS survey6 (undertaken January2019) across a diverse collection of biopharmaceu-tical, agri-food companies, academia and industryassociated software vendors assessed their relativematurity. This survey has enabled us to get a pulseof what is happening within the industry.

UX maturity of enterprise R&D organisations around the middle tierThe UXLS survey6 has enabled the comparison ofUX maturity across different scales. One such scalewas the sequence of Nielsen Norman CorporateUX Maturity stages7 (Figure 1), an organisationalmapping ranging from hostility towards usability(no-one in the survey), to being a completely user-driven corporation (also no-one in the survey). Areport based on the results of this survey foundthat while Big Pharma were mostly around a mid-dle tier, software vendors are able to reach a highermaturity level. This is in part due to culture changebeing easier in smaller organisations. The teamwent further and developed a UXLS maturitymodel encompassing the three factors of:l Impact: what impact is UX having on the organ-isation?

Figure 2Maturity measured in January2019 for 13 biopharmaceutical,agri-food, academia andindustry-associated softwarevendors, using the in-housedeveloped UXLS maturitymodel across the factors ofImpact, Process and UXMetrics and Analytics


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l Process: culture of embedding of UX techniques.l UXLS analytics and metrics: how are metricscollected and used?

Small and medium organisations achieve the highest UX impactSurveying all 13 organisations against the UXLSmaturity model, we found UX seems to have itshighest impact on smaller organisations (Figure 2).Perhaps in-line with a middle-tier status, the reportalso noted that adoption of user-driven processesin key projects appeared greater and faster com-pared to an impactful organisation-wide culture ofUX, with very few projects having UX input. Thesefindings correlate with the New Design FrontierReport by InVision with findings from more than2,200 surveyed companies8. As more start-up companies arise to address the

promise of new digital technologies, we see manyadopt the Agile and/or Lean Start-up approaches.As both approaches focus heavily on the voice ofthe customers, there is a natural alignment withUX9. Often start-ups contain a few subject matterexperts who may need to be trained in UX as theymay not be able to afford a full time UX practition-er. Often, we see that UX roles are spread acrossthe entire team or closely championed by anotherrole, such as the product owner. We suggest start-

ups download the UXLS toolkit5 to learn how toincorporate UX tools into their project lifecycle.This will build appreciation for the concepts in UXso as the company scales, UX can scale with them.

UX capabilities are maturing across Enterprise R&D organisationsThe normalised size of UX teams within an organ-isation (size of UX team relative to the size oforganisation) was found to vary widely. Softwarevendors reported the smallest teams with UXsometimes being shared across multiple roles. Atthe same time while some big organisations wereonly hiring few UX practitioners, others signifi-cantly increased their headcounts over time. Thedepth of UX capabilities (Figure 3) have increasedsince 2017 with User Research now a muchstronger capability than was previously reported3.

Learnings about UX in the life sciences since 2017Strategies by which the awareness and uptake ofUX and design can be raised in the life sciencesindustry or within individual organisations are typ-ically driven bottom-up or top-down. A bottom-upstrategy might come from evangelists in the UXand design roles. These are the day-to-day practi-tioners who have the ground-level empathy with

Figure 3A survey of 13 R&D

organisations in January 2019depicts a broader UX

capability


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the users of scientific software, applications,devices or other services.

UX adoption works best with a combined top-down and bottom-up approachThis collaborative empathy often ends up being acontinuous process of sharing, educating and evan-gelising the UX mindset to development teams,product owners, stakeholders and, indeed, anyoneinvolved in a project. This infuses a gentle back-ground of user-centred design into an organisation,but it does not bring about changes in culture.Culture change also has to be driven from the topdown, typically by those in a C-suite or highermanagement role who recognise the need for anorganisational shift toward improving the cus-tomer or user experience. Culture change rarelyworks purely as a top-down or a bottom-up strat-egy, but a bi-directional approach can reallyimprove the chances of success.There is no perfect UX team structure and they

need to be adapted to the organisational culture In the survey6 a wide variety of team structures

and operational models were reported. Two majorarchetypes of team structures are design studiosand embedded networks.

l The design studio refers to the structure consist-ing of a centralised team, typically lead by a seniorprofessional, that takes up common responsibili-ties and distributes work between UX team mem-bers, so that the team can hand-off deliverables toanother team that works on the development. Thismodel is more traditional and has a longer historyof success, being most closely aligned to how UXconsultancies have operated for decades.l The embedded network in contrast is a teamstructure where one or two UX professionals arepart of the development teams working with thisteam day-to-day, blurring the line between UX andnon-UX activities. In such a situation there is typi-cally some connection established between thoseprofessionals, either through a technology team,community of practice, guilds, loose or managednetworks.

The design studio model is typically associatedwith waterfall project management, while theembedded network is more common in organisa-tions that have adopted agile product developmentstrategies. There are also examples of mixed mod-els or both models working in the same companyat the same time.The embedded network is often used in compa-

nies that wish to improve the ambient capability of

UX across their workforce, by enabling the embed-ded UX professionals to mentor and coach otherdevelopment team members in UX practices; sucha model is sometimes related to the ‘democratisa-tion of UX’ and is a growing philosophy, albeitwith limited examples of success so far.

UX training is useful to ease communicationthrough a common vocabulary Most of the enterprise-sized organisations have runUX training schemes. Training has enabled col-leagues to share a common vocabulary which isessential when trying to work together. In somecases, UX training has been embedded into devel-opment training such as requirements analysis asthis is a term that may well resonate with develop-ment teams. Using in-house UX trainers or linkingup your UX team with colleagues who have beenon training courses provides useful results.

UX needs to dovetail with Agile developmentAgile approaches have been widely adopted acrossall organisations. In some cases, UX practitionershave struggled to adapt to the agile developmentapproach. In particular, struggling to incorporate asolid research basis into the agile developmentcycles. UX practitioners have since adapted toAgile with some adopting a two-track productbacklog of Discovery and Development9.Furthermore, training courses are now beingoffered which incorporate UX into professionalagile training10.

UX will be key for digital transformationIn the age of digitalisation the customer and theuser moves more into focus – nowadays it is nolonger the improving of products towards techni-cal perfection that often was an internal view onprocesses and their efficiency – digitalisation bringsthe customer/user into play since it is not solely theproduct as a standalone thing that is considered.The environment and context of use is fundamen-tally important and can only be understood if it isdeeply analysed – here UX is of huge value tounderstand the customers or users’ needs.

Scaling up using UX vendorsWhen UX accelerates in a company it will need UXvendors to support it. It is important that vendorsunderstand the organisation’s culture. At thebeginning of any new project with a new UX ven-dor, in-house UX teams will need to support andfollow each project initially to manage expecta-tions from both the project team and UX vendors.Expectations need to be managed on both sides of


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the equation. There may be projects that do notwork as expected – in-house UX teams have aresponsibility to ensure such cultural challenges donot erode the steady progress of UX in their organ-isations.

Future of UX in the R&D life SciencesOnce we have overcome the challenges of intro-ducing UX, educated the wider organisation andproving the value of User Experience and User-Centred Design through successful outcomes, andembedded into the psyche of the business, what arethe next challenges?Is it new technologies such as automation and

software or is it creating and using templates andprocesses? Or is it that once we have shown teamshow to run Design Thinking and User-CentredDesign, we retain the right levels of consulting,ownership and quality? Will our internal clientswant to hire their own UX people or use agenciesto ensure complete ownership and accountabilityof all UX work?

The promise of Design ThinkingCurrently, we see great interest in DesignThinking11, which signals a fantastic opportunityto accelerate UX and User-Centred Design (UCD).Internal UX Teams are ideally placed to be at thevanguard of this movement and to evangelise UCDthroughout the entire organisation, far beyondR&D. However, one note of caution – it is easy tobecome swept up in the growing UX trend. It isimperative to have highly-skilled UX practitionersto support and consult on projects needing thisapproach, versus simply having ‘Design Thinking’-trained staff create these experiences. While the lat-ter can certainly play a role, projects undertakenfrom a pure design thinking standpoint can oftenlead to less than optimal results and, at their worst,developer and business-led solutions that gounloved and unused.There are elements of change management,

coaching and support to ensure that the quality ofthe designs are as good as they should be.Additionally, it is important to empower people tobegin leveraging research and to make sure theyrun Usability Testing12. However, when it comes todesigning the future systems, this is where the truevalue of UX design will be realised.

The patient experience will be the differentiatorAs we move beyond the blockbuster drugs era, weneed to be providing added value. We are nowrepurposing generic and biosimilar drugs and thereis not much differentiation. The differentiation will

come on the patient experience. Patients will seeka complete end-to-end experience and hence theservices they use will be critical in providing aseamless experience. Patients are taking control oftheir own health and their experience needs to bedesigned so that it is seamless. We will helppatients manage a disease rather than delivering aproduct. As an example, the population in Africa is pri-

marily mobile based which is completely differentto other regions. Healthcare provision to such alarge population would require UX skills to under-stand the patient, the environment and servicedelivery. We are moving now towards a ServiceDesign model13.So, the future is very promising, there is more

and more value seen in being patient centric andcreating innovative design solutions that are basedon people’s real needs and goals, however it isimportant that there is not a drop in the qualitydelivered as many, many more people share thefocus on users, it is still key for those with the rightskills to deliver. This will require a higher level offocus on storytelling and communications by theUX teams to continue driving this success.

Digital transformationAs technology gives way to new trends, such as AIand machine learning, there is enormous opportu-nity for UX practitioners. Many companies aremaking the leap to ‘digital transformation’14, oftendriven top-down from the CEO, CIO and ChiefDigital Officer. Access to more data and emergingtechnologies may lead to better insight and analysisfor organisations, but more data can also bringmore challenges and the need for specialists skilledin problem solving. As the C-Suite continues to look for ROI with

digital transformation efforts, the need for skilledUX practitioners is greater than ever. UX has anopportunity to be involved with highly-strategicand visible projects, increasing the recognition ofthe value of UX across the organisation. If organi-sations are to be successful in their digital transfor-mations, it will be because a great UX teamengaged the end users and ensured emerging tech-nologies were implemented with a human-centredapproach.

UX will be key to R&D process changesIn R&D we expect to see significant processchanges. The way we work currently has tochange. Going away for 10-20 years and maybecoming back with a pill is no longer viable. On thebusiness side we will move towards targeted thera-

References1The New Design FrontierReport from InVisionhttps://s3.amazonaws.com/www-assets.invisionapp.com/The-New-Design-Frontier-from-InVision.pdf page 28. Surveyconducted Fall 2018.2 Kelly’s I interview of JeffBezos http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Kelly's+I+Interview%3A+Jeff+Bezos+-+Q%3A+How+does+it+feel+to+be+sitting...-a062672450.3 Cham, Jennifer A and Cost,Katrina. UX DESIGNmaximising the value ofscientific software in lifescience R&D. Drug DiscoveryWorld. Published Summer2017. https://www.pistoiaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/UXLS-UX-design-value-of-software.pdf.4 Pistoia Alliance UserExperience for Life Sciencesproject https://www.pistoiaalliance.org/projects/user-experience-for-life-sciences/.5 Pistoia Alliance UXLS toolkithttps://uxls.org/ PublishedFebruary 2018.6 UXLS survey conducted bythe Pistoia Alliance UXLSproject team across 13members across a collectionof biopharmaceutical, agri-foodcompanies, academia andindustry associated softwarevendors. The survey wasconducted in the Autumn of2018 and published January2019.7 Norman Nielsen MaturityModel https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-1-4/ Published April2006.8The New Design FrontierReport from Invisionhttps://www.invisionapp.com/design-better/design-maturity-model/page 33. Surveyconducted Fall 2018.9 Agile UX: Designing Togetherhttps://www.pistoiaalliance.org/blog/agile-ux-designing-together/ Published 30September 2019.

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Evolution of user experiences.qxp_Layout 1 17/01/2020 12:26 4

pies that are fertile for profit but harder to achieve.A smaller group of patients. How does that work?How do we empower that? Whether developing new software or architect-

ing new ways to store and retrieve data, the voiceof the end user is paramount. End users are lesslikely to adopt any new technology if the experi-ence is frustrating and time-consuming, regardlessof how pretty the buttons and icons are andregardless of how much promise the new technol-ogy offers. DDW

Jacek Ziemski is an expert in user experience andbioinformatics product design who works atRoche where he used to be responsible for settingup software usability practice within pharma r&dorganisations. He specialises in large moleculeshigh-throughput screening and laboratory work-flow automation.

Simon Fortenbacher is the Director of UserExperience & Design within the Pharma R&DTech area of GSK. He leads a team of UX design-ers and analysts who focus on improving the expe-rience GSK R&D users have of life science soft-ware, providing expertise, processes and guidelinesto product teams who deliver systems acrossR&D.

James Hoeksma has more than 20 years’ UserExperience across many roles with a sustainedtrack record of delivering global, industry-leadinguser experience solutions at organisations includ-ing Microsoft, Nokia, T-Mobile and Virgin. Jamesjoined AstraZeneca in 2015, working on internalEarly Science to HCP and patient-facing solutions

Jan Taubert is Head of RD-IT at KWS where heleads the R&D Data Management department,including software engineering, database develop-ment, breeding applications and new technologies.Jan helps plant breeders and molecular biologyresearchers to discover candidate genes, improveplant traits and breed crop varieties through pro-viding innovative IT solutions.

Roger Attrill is a User Experience Specialist atLinguamatics, an IQVIA company, where he isresponsible for the UX research and design on newand existing products in the area of natural lan-guage processing for high-value knowledge discov-ery and decision support from text.


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at SLAS2020Visit booth 1313

mpaa-automation.co


Paula de Matos is an independent UX consultantspecialising in complex data environments, specifi-cally in the life sciences and biotech sectors. She isalso the project manager for the Pistoia Alliance’sUXLS project.

André Richter has been a usability engineer formore than 10 years and works in the R&D soft-ware development area of Bayer. His main focus ison early research applications such as lab note-books, LIMS and other laboratory supporting soft-ware at crop science as well as pharmaceuticals. Hehas been driving the process to make user-centreddesign an integral part of the companies R&D ITfor a number of years.

Julie Morrison is the Executive Vice-President ofRockStep Solutions, where one of her areas offocus is on product management for Climb, acloud software for preclinical drug discoveryresearch and operations. Julie works closely withboth clients and developers to ensure the best soft-ware experience for Climb’s users.

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10Training courses such asProfessional Scrum with UserExperience Traininghttps://www.scrum.org/courses/professional-scrumtm-user-experience-training.11The Making of a DesignThinker by Tim Brown, CEOof IDEO. https://www.metropolismag.com/ideas/the-making-of-a-design-thinker/.Published October 2009.12 Usability Testing is a usertesting methodology widelyemployed in UX. https://uxls.org/methods/usability-testing/.13 Service Design 101https://www.nngroup.com/articles/service-design-101/.Published 9th July 2017.14 Michael Shanler, StephenDavies. Gartner. The Future ofPharma is Digital. Refreshed 31October 2016.


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Abcam 32

Analytik Jena AG 23

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc 51

Biostrata Ltd 19

BMG Labtech GmbH OBC

Brooks Life Sciences 8,16

Carterra, Inc IFC-3

Eurofins Discovery Services 4

PAA, Peak Analysis & Automation 65

Select Biosciences Ltd IBC

STP Labtech 25

Taconic Biosciences, Inc 6

ThermoFisher Scientific 40

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