Labregister

Background

Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market size was valued at USD 861.27 Million in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 1530.77 Million by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 6.70% from 2023 to 2030. Technological advancements and the increasing demand for lab automation are anticipated to propel the demand of the market. A rising focus on improving the efficiency of laboratories is also boosting the market growth.

💡 We saw this as an opportunity and decided to redesign our LIMS application.

Goals

To enable users to update their Labregister Categories with the data from their xlsx file, so that they don’t need to update existing Items in their Labregister Categories individually. Also to communicate the new behaviour of the “Add Excel” feature to our users.

My Role

Primarily I was the Product designer for this project, it had a short deadline and the PRD was handed over from the first week. I immediately went into the research phase to dive deeper into understanding the problem and how to design a solution that aligns with user needs and business goals. To me this is the sweet spot of product design.

The Green Team

1 Product Designer (Me) 👨🏾‍🎨

1 Product Manager 👷👷👨🏾‍🕰📞

2 Front End Developer 👩🏽‍💻👨

1 Backend Developer 👨🏿‍💻

Timeline

4 Weeks

Research

Interview:

I first spoke with our users to understand the opportunity and uncover how it could be beneficial to their experience and goals when using our product.

It turns out that at some point, many users have had significant difficulties navigating the "Add Excel" feature and uploading their Excel files to their Labregister category. This confirms my initial assumption that we need to design a product that is intuitive, easy to use, and aligned with our organization's business goals.

Painpoint

1. I use all three products and adding files behave differently across all product

2. Why does my uploaded excel not overwrite with the attributes in my category, it always creates a duplicate

3. I am not sure why we have the add features scattered. It confuses me

4. I’d love to be able to upload my excel files to my Labregister category quickly, sometimes it’s hard to find

Addressing The limitation

We had some limitations, but we found a way around it. Based on the insights from our research, it was pretty obvious that the most important thing to scientists was finding it easier to add their excel file and making sure they did not get a duplicate after uploading their excel file to the Labregister category.

📝 Scenario: Florian is a scientist that works in Berlin Laboratory. He has 3 items in his excel file and uploads it to his category that has 3 items with same attributes as that in the excel file. After the upload of the excel file, he gets a duplicate which makes a total of 6 items, but Florian wants a feature that overwrites, to make him have a total of 3 items after uploading his excel file.

We Had just One How Might We

How might we help our Customers add excel files easily to their category and ensure they don’t get a duplicate of the items they upload in the category that has the same attribute with the excel files?

Userflow

Based on the User interviews and existing behaviour for the add button, I came up with a user flow diagram to guide the design. Here is a simplified version of it that outlines the features we agreed upon.

What Problem Did We Have With Our Previous Look?

The outdated and old-fashioned appearance of our product was considered inefficient and unclear. While it was necessary to address the immediate issue, it was equally important to modernize our look and feel. This is crucial because research indicates that users perceive aesthetically appealing designs as more user-friendly. Therefore, revamping the aesthetic of our product is not only important for visual appeal but also for improving usability.

Source: www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/

UX Audit

Issues 1: The interface was inefficient and lacked clarity making it challenging for the users to transverse from one screen to another when navigating.

Issues 2: The "add" action on the interface is scattered which makes it confusing to the users. This violates the best practice recommendation as it has the users thinking if the "add" actions behaves the same or not across other platforms

Issues 3: The action to "add excel file" behaves very differently from the other two customer facing product "add item" action leading to inconsistency and lack of unification with other product in the ecosystem

Issues 4: There is a wrong placement of the avatar feature which can pose a challenge for the users because of their mental models. Users have an expectation of what to expect when using your product based on convention and when these conventions are broken it affects usability, hence leading to decreased engagement.

Sketching The Solution

First approach to solution was to sketch the ideas based on the insights gathered from the user research. Numerous ideas were explored and and tested with the users to gather feedback.

High-Fidelity

After validating the effectiveness of the solution with the users, i began to translate the solution into high-fidelity designs based on the feedback from the users and internal stakeholders. At Labforward, we currently have a design system, so I utilized its components to create the high-fidelity screens.

Categories Page With The New "Add Button"

We have condensed "Add Category", "Add Item", and "Add Excel" into a single button with dropdown behavior to make it more accessible for our customers. When you click "Add Excel", a dialogue modal will appear, allowing you to import Excel files.

Change Category

Users have the flexibility to change the category where the Excel file is uploaded. This can be done using the search bar, and the available categories will drop down as results.

Import Data From Excel File

After the user has selected the category for the Excel file, they can import the file from their computer. During the import process, the user receives feedback on the progress of the import. The import component is then disabled, since only one Excel file can be uploaded at a time.

Communicating The New "Add Excel" Behaviour To Users

We explored two ways to communicate the new feature. The first option was to display an "info alert banner" after a successful Excel file upload, which directly communicates the update to users. The second option was to communicate the update immediately when the first dialogue modal appears. This way, users can see the update info first while they upload their Excel file.

Below are the two variants that were tested with the users using the preference testing methods to get from the users which one they preferred. These are the two explorations in their respective order:

First exploration to communicating the update to users

Second exploration to communicating the update to users

Testing The Ideas- How Did It Perform?

I tested with eight participants. For some reason, five of them were unclear about the "alert info banner" on the dialogue modal, and ignored it most of the time. However, surprisingly, seven participants interacted more with the "alert info banner" on the Match Attributes page.

• Seven test participants interacted more with the updated information on the first exploration

• Five test participants were unclear about the information alert banner and simply wanted to proceed with their Excel file upload on the second exploration

What Does Success Look Like?

After the testing the prototype, I needed to gather feedback from the participants. I wanted to know how easy it was to complete the task. In this case I was interested in tracking the “Customer Effort Score”. This metric is to help me know if users found it easy getting the new update feature information.

“7 Out of the 8 research participants gave an overall positive feedback on the task. Converting 7/8 to a percentage:

7/8 * 100 = 87.5% = 8.75/10

🥳 The success metric, with a CES scale of 1-10, was 8.75. This indicates that users found the task very easy.