OneStudyTeam
Concept Ideation
User Interviews
Wireframing
Prototyping
Lead Product Designer
2 months
The current document uploading process is causing significant frustration for users and hindering their productivity. With only one document upload allowed per patient at a time, users are forced to spend hours waiting for multiple documents to be uploaded for multiple patients. This process is not only tedious, but also restricts users from performing other tasks on the platform.
The concept of the 'Upload Queue' will solve this problem by giving users the ability to:
During a company retreat in Austin, TX, a few designers and product managers got the opportunity to visit a clinical research site to observe our users' day to day activities and how they interacted with our product. While talking to a few staff members about their experience with using StudyTeam Documents, I discovered that many of them preferred using other software products instead of ours. Why was that?
It turns out that our platform had many inefficient processes that were causing frustration for our users where it would take double the time to complete a simple task. This eventually drove our users into the arms of other third-party products. They would rather use 3 different software products to complete all their tasks in half the time than to use our in-house product that took double the time.
This made complete sense, but was also extremely alarming to hear. The one pain point that seemed to be unanimous among all the user interviews that I conducted was how slow the process of uploading patient documents is.
Upon discovering this major pain point, I wanted to figure out how and why the uploading process was inefficient. I sat down with a clinical research coordinator and had him walk me through the entire process so I could see for myself.
Upon observation, I noticed a couple things:
Clinical research staff are already overworked and have very limited time in their day to dedicate to data entry as is. Having to work with a software that makes their job more difficult will deter them from using it, which may lead them to adopt a competing software.
After a very informative trip to the research site in Austin, I gathered up all of my notes from the contextual inquiries and user interviews that I conducted and drew up an affinity map to summarize our findings on how our users generally felt about the current user experience of StudyTeam Documents. I also created a SWOT analysis based on feedback that was shared by our users about our product to gain a better understanding on how we compared against competitors and highlight areas for improvement.
Next, I took some time exploring the current software UI to figure out where the feature could live on the platform and how the user might interact with it. Some important factors that I considered when creating a user flow include feature discoverability, information architecture, and current UI constraints.
For the design of the feature itself, I went back to the assumptions that I brainstormed on earlier in the design process. For example, I knew that the current uploading process was in a focused state that restricted users from navigating anywhere else on the platform while documents were processing, so we needed to resolve that. If we give users the ability to drag & drop multiple files to be uploaded at a time, where do those files go after upload submission if we want them to process in the background? And how do we alert the user that the uploads are complete?
All roads lead to the 'Upload Queue', which is the concept that I came up with to resolve frustrations around our current uploading process. I mocked up a couple preliminary options for the look and functionality of the feature below.
With this solution, the Upload Queue would give users the ability to:
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Once we had a solution in place, I proceeded to refine the visual design of the feature by taking more of a minimal approach to improve on the visual hierarchy.
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After a few more rounds of iterations, we ended up with some nifty high fidelity designs ✨
The engineering team brought up various scenarios that design and product had not considered, mainly related to failure states and technical limitations:
Inspired by valuable feedback and a deep understanding of the concerns raised, I embarked on an iterative journey, returning to the drawing board to craft custom warning messages using our existing design system:
This feature expedites clinical trial studies by simplifying the process of collecting and organizing essential documents. Researchers and study coordinators save time, enhance collaboration, and ensure timely completion of documentation, ultimately advancing medical research and improving patient outcomes.
Drop me an email:
tiffanyuxdesign@gmail.com