Designing a Tool to Accelerate Medical Research
WashU Medical School Project
Overview :
In collaboration with a medical researcher from WashU Medical School, our team developed a literature review software aimed at improving the efficiency and collaboration of research teams. The project's goal was to improve the time-consuming and often frustrating process of conducting literature reviews, especially when researchers and clinicians work in large teams. I led the development of concept two, which was a collaborative workspace feature for our software. Through Figma, I created a workspace for users through interactive high-fidelity wireframes. After presenting, our group was told that both features would be included in their software for her medical research teams at WashU.
My Roles
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Product Designer
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User Researcher
Methods
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Rapid-prototyping
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Client Relations
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User Interviews
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Design Strategy
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Figma and FigJam
Timeline
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6 weeks
The Problem
Medical researchers lack intuitive and collaborative software to conduct literature reviews. This limits medical research output, which decreases and inhibits research on potential medical solutions for health issues.
Guiding
Question
How could collaborative teams of healthcare researchers be supported to complete excellent and efficient literature reviews?
The
Solution
Develop an interface and elements of a literature review software called DoxCompass to assist medical researchers' literature reviews.
Utilizing the Double Diamond Design Framework.
Our tasks and objectives were established using this framework, which helped structure our creative problem-solving and was an excellent resource to refer to when confused or stumped. It fostered creative output and rapid prototyping backed by research and user input. Although the design process typically isn't this linear and cookie-cutter, it's still an excellent framework.
Primary and Secondary Research
Systematic Reviews are Rigorous.
Coming from a neuroscience background, the research process came easily to me. The biggest challenge at the beginning of this project was understanding systematic reviews. I wanted to know their utility and the challenges that users involved in this process faced. During this project, I learned how important research is for the design process, as it gave structure to my approach to the problem.
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We started with secondary research, where we each read online articles, watched videos, and tried competitor systematic review tools to better understand the review landscape. Having a greater understanding of the product is crucial for making an effective product.
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Much of our product was built from the interviews and insights we gained during our primary research. During this process, we interviewed four healthcare researchers and professionals about their experience conducting literature searches and systematic reviews. In the end, I synthesized the data and extracted important details to guide our work.
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Secondary Research
Systematic Reviews Are Complex and Need Reliable Software.
Through individual research, I learned about the mechanics of the systematic review process and the current software used by researchers. This information helped our team develop two concepts and equipped us with the foundational knowledge to conduct interviews with healthcare professionals.
Current Tools Researchers Use.
Pros: dedicated conflict tab is helpful
Cons: difficult to navigate because information of the page isn’t explained, rating system isn’t intuitive
Pros: Visually clear - makes good use of icons, buttons, etc. to communicate. Color-coded + more simplified terminology (yes, no, maybe)
Cons: centralized layout isn’t optimal
Pros: strategic use of color (highlights keywords), AI-aided search is unique
Cons: graphs to visualize paper content at a glance are interesting but hard to decipher
How do Literature Reviews Work?
Systematic reviews dive deep into research with a structured approach, starting with a clear question and gathering relevant studies. This process involves meticulous searches through databases and careful evaluation of study quality. Piecing together evidence to form a comprehensive view of a topic is difficult and requires software support. This method ensures that conclusions are based on the best available evidence, making systematic reviews essential for evidence-based practices. Understanding this process helps us design solutions that will impact our users.
Review Steps
DEFINE Your Research Question
DEVELOP Your Review Protocol
CONDUCT a Comprehensive Search
SCREEN Results for Eligibility
ANALYZE the Quality of the Studies
EXTRACT Data and Synthesize
Best Practices
The value and credibility of a review depends on these main factors:
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The importance of the question
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The quality of the original studies
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The efforts undertaken to minimize bias
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The clinical applicability
Primary Research
User Insights Guide Our Designs.
By conducting interviews with systematic reviewers, we found that collaboration plays an important role in the systematic review process. Collaboration tools were often necessary to facilitate seamless and efficient workflows. However, current processes have friction due to a lack of one centralized workspace that enables collaboration.
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My group and I all talked individually with different healthcare professionals and tracked quotes, key insights, and pain points that they shared. This helped me get a great understanding of what kind of changes they wanted in the design of their new software for research. I had a lot of fun talking with these researchers and bringing empathy to truly understand how I can impact them.
Primary Research Synthesis
Making Impact Means Targeting Painpoints.
After talking to over five WashU medical professionals, my team and I reviewed the insights and highlighted the three overlapping issues with the current literature review software. We did this by looking at all the research notes and grouped them by themes in Figjam. Below, you can see how we grouped all our questions and responses in one master Jamboard. By seeing all of our insights and themes, I got a clear, holistic understanding of the issues researchers are facing. By identifying these pain points, I could strategize exactly how to impact them. I included a relevant quote for each pain point to give more context to the issue.
Images: Primary questions (left) and responses recorded (right)
Paint Point # 1
Collaboration Challenges
Coordinating and managing current and upcoming tasks among individuals with diverse backgrounds, varying levels of experience, and differing schedules can pose logistical challenges. Our product should find a way to help coordinate tasks and track the literature review team's work progress.
“The issue with collaboration is mostly documenting...It’s hard to know what was done or what was not done.” - JA (Nurse Prationer )
Paint Point # 2
Short Falls of Current Tools
Existing tools like the Microsoft Office Suite are not designed with the systematic review process in mind, imposing limitations on researchers and leading to workflow inefficiencies. This was the problem I was most interested in. After hearing their insights, I wanted to find a way to improve their workflow organization and help team members communicate their work in a systematic way. Here's one of my favorite quotes.
“If we could have Excel and Word smashed together in certain things like I would be probably in heaven...I always feel super embarrassed when I like copy paste it over into Word and I see all of my spelling errors.” - AB (PHD Medical Researcher)
Paint Point # 3
Lack of Visualization Information
Researchers are having trouble visualizing key points in papers and what other researchers have contributed to them. An effective feature that highlights important text or comments can help synthesize data better and determine if a paper fits exclusion criteria. Our product must contain a way to visualize this data efficiently and improve workflow.
“Having a color-coding systemic for systematic reviews would be super useful and efficient. ” - AB (PHD Medical Researcher)
Now with a clear understanding of the paint points and current process the users have adopted, we created a detailed positive goal statement to guide our project...
What's Our Product's Goal?
We want researchers and contributors to feel equipped to collaborate efficiently within a team and seamlessly implement their established review process workflows.
Applying User Insights and Brainstorming
How Might We Fix These Issues ?
Leveraging User Research to Brainstorm
Using Pinboards to Our Advantage.
Using our user research, our team began to use Post-it notes and index cards to rapid prototype. Based on the challenges that current researchers faced, we brainstormed potential solutions. From there, we started designing the ideas that could combat each issue. This allowed for quick thoughts and creative output. By not focusing on details, we each produced multiple ideas that could be impactful for users. Working as a team, we bounced ideas off each other and elevated our creative problem-solving.
Team's Proposed Solutions
We Want to Make Systematic Reviews Organized and Easy to Track.
Using "How My We" statements and sticky notes, our team developed multiple ideas from our user interviews and personal research. We used pinboards to stick up our proposed solutions and then combined similar ideas and concepts together to create a focused solution. We also developed three solutions based on their impact on users and connecting them directly to specific interview quotes we had. The solution I was most involved in creating was the workflow organization.
Communication Portal
To keep teams updated, we proposed two ideas: activity notifications and a centralized communication system. This will improve team communication and make the systematic review more streamline.
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Task and Deadline Tracking
Delegating tasks is difficult for big teams, but organization can improve task project completion. Using tools for assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and tracking progress with checklists and progress bars can help combat this.
Workflow Organization
Current users complicate their tasks by using multiple external tools. Clarity can be improved through an integrated platform for managing research papers, notes, and comments with highlighting and commenting functionalities.
Creating Briefs for Detailed Feedback
We Need Some More Feedback.
Now, with our concepts, we needed to refine them and get feedback from users and our clients. Our team had to provide a brief description of our idea and key aspects of the concepts. We also included simple storyboards to provide context to help users understand each concept. With these guides, we each asked feedback-oriented questions to assist in refining our ideas. Getting feedback from our client was crucial, as it reassured us that our concepts were impactful and relevant for current users. I focused on the workflow organization idea as I came up with it.
Example of a Storyboard from Guide
Prototyping
Workspace and Progress Tracking Features Assist Researchers.
After receiving feedback from users and other designers, we finalized our two concepts for the software. I was in charge of creating the prototypes for the collaborative workplace. I used Figma to create the interactive prototypes and my teammate assisted in getting feedback from the client.
Concept #1
Progress Tracking
This feature will keep track of progress and deadlines across a team with different backgrounds and schedules during systematic reviews. Ultimately, this feature will improve work efficiency and understanding of the tasks at hand.
Concept #2
Collaborative Workplace
This feature assists with sorting and analyzing thousands of articles as a team during systematic reviews and helps establish inclusion criteria. This workspace will help users avoid external tools, making the process more efficient.
Low-Fidelity Prototypes
Our First Go.
I created these designs in Figma, using the users' feedback to guide my design decisions. I used various tools like Google Docs and Sheets for inspiration. The other designer for the messaging/progress concept and I created the navigation bar together. Having these prototypes close to the final iterations was a big goal, as I wanted my partner to get detailed feedback from our client so I could refine the prototype.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Our Final Product.
After my teammate presented the designs, we received detailed feedback from our client and a guest designer for the class. I had to translate their feedback quickly to make a final deliverable, and my teammate helped present the final product to our class with the rest of our team's ideas. I adjusted the designs to be more suitable for database upload and filtering through massive amounts of research papers.
Design Decisions.
Our design choices all aided in conducting systematic reviews. Our features help users refrain from using external tools, making their work more efficient.
Annotation
One feature we wanted to emphasize was annotations, which will help the researcher keep track of what information in the paper meets specific criteria. It allows to quickly see what's important from the paper, improving workflow. Each researcher is given an assigned color, allowing people to view what others annotated.
Layout
We adapted Excel's familiar column and row format to suit a more text-heavy approach. The overall view shows only essential information at a glance, with detailed pages accessible upon clicking an article. Our layout reduces blockiness and supports text formatting like bold and italics, unlike Excel's basic text display.
Views
Having an empty first page is less overwhelming than a detailed highlighted view. We allowed users to switch between views so the researchers could decide when they wanted to check if a paper met the criteria. When users toggle to annotate mode, they can see all annotations and criteria commented on by their peers.
Presenting To the Client
Our Ideas Moved On!
On our final day of class, our team collectively presented our two methods. My partner and I presented the wireframes and walked our client through my decision-making.
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Our client, a medical researcher, thought each idea would be highly beneficial to their software. She thought that our specific feature would benefit the team as they are familiar with Excel and Docs and could benefit from annotating each paper.
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Her only criticism was that our initial page, which shows each database of research papers, was not structured realistically. Many of the papers they see have long, extensive names, and they would want to see more key insights on each paper.
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Ultimately, she informed us that she would use both of our ideas in the DoxCompass software! This was an exciting feeling as I had never made something that would directly be used by another person.
Takeaways
Building Impactful Interfaces.
This was my first project that was directly aimed at helping a client. Working for a client made my work much more impactful, especially considering that it would help medical researchers. Being exposed to this kind of work made me realize that working in the industry was a career goal of mine. Having a design framework was new and exciting, but I enjoyed having a general structure for the process. It allowed me to make informed decisions and hone in on the opportunities for our designs to affect. With user feedback, I could make quick but beneficial ideas during our rapid prototyping portion of the project - which was my favorite part. The team aspect of this project was also amazing, as we each individually did work yet combined our findings to support our product goal. I learned how to work as a team in a design setting and how to use collective creativity to make decisions. I felt like this project gave me a glimpse into real-life design projects, and I use many of the skills I gained on this project to his day.