BioMedical Equipment Sales

Design Sprint & Self-Service User Portal

A leading pharmaceutical and health information technology company. Our focus for this project was on a new offering that would enable customers to independently order biomedical equipment.

Process

TIMELINE: 1-week Design Sprint & 5-month project

DESIGN SPRINT TEAM: 2 UX Designers

PROJECT TEAM: 1 UX Designer, 4 Developers

MY ROLE: Design Sprint Facilitator, Information Architecture, Wireframing + Prototyping

MY METHODS: Rapid Prototyping, Usability Testing, Stakeholder Interviews

TOOLS: Mural, AdobeXD, Jira, Confluence

Research

DESIGN SPRINT:

My team led our clients through a weeklong Design Sprint to validate a potential product with identified users. We hosted this workshop virtually with participants joining from multiple cities.

For the first two days, we defined the current problem and potential solutions. During the third day, I built the prototype that would be used to test our solution with users. On the fourth day, we did user tests and synthesized our findings. On the final day, we presented our findings to the clients.

 
 
 

ASK THE EXPERTS & HOW MIGHT WE STATEMENTS:

Our first exercise was “Ask the Experts” to help the team understand the current needs and problems our users are facing. This sets the foundation for defining the problem we are aiming to build a solution for during the workshop. An added bonus for this exercise is hearing about any previous research or assumptions.

During these Expert interviews, we had participants write “How Might We” statements which helped us identify potential opportunities or solutions to current problems.

 

We had our participants discuss the HMW statements and vote to determine the top one. Below are the two HMW statements our participants determined encompassed the core problem and the way we

 
 
 

SPRINT GOAL & QUESTIONS:

We then worked to define a long-term goal for what we hope to accomplish if everything is successful after the product launch. We also discussed challenges that could make this project fail and defined two questions.

 
 
 
 
 

MAPPING:

We created two simple workflows that we wanted to test. The first one would enable customers to rent biomedical equipment independently without needing to go through customer service. The second workflow allowed them to get their rented devices serviced/repaired.

 

LIGHTNING DEMOS & SKETCHING:

We then had the team find inspiration from existing products, services, and experiences that could serve as inspiration for the project. After each participant presented their ideas, we got to sketching! We used the 4-step sketch method to help participants get their ideas out on paper and voted on the top solutions.

The 4-Step Sketch method from “The Design Sprint” by Jake Knapp.

Some of the top solutions from the straw poll

USER FLOW:

Now that we had a clear understanding of our problem and a few possible solutions, we got to work building out the work flow. We used this work flow to inform the screens I would need to build for the prototype.

Our user flow that we wanted to test.

Our full proposed site map that we then simplified to pieces we could build quickly and test by the end of the week.

RAPID PROTOTYPING:

On the third day, I built the prototype and wrote the test script for our user test the following day.

TASKS:

  • Order 10 Enteral Joey Pumps

  • Send a device out for Preventative Maintenance

  • Review your Service Requests

  • Check your order status

  • Review your other orders

    • Describe the statuses of the other orders.

  • Review your Device List

    • Tell me the types of device statuses you see

USER TESTS:

At the beginning of the week, we had our Decision Maker locate current customers to test our new product. We scheduled 6 user tests throughout the day and had only one cancelation.

Our participants were encouraged to join the user tests and silently observe while taking notes. We asked them to record “positive”, “negative” and “interesting” things they noticed during the tests.

 

Research Synthesis

 

WHAT WE TESTED:

I built a prototype to test if users could rent devices and request service/repairs without needing customer service or sales representatives. We also tested notifications to see if there was an opportunity for users to be updated in the portal rather than relying on email.

FINDINGS:

  • Renting devices independently through a portal seemed easy and useful for users

  • Using a portal to manage devices (inventory and service/returns) seemed appealing.

  • Mandatory accessories were confusing to users and needs clearer messaging.

  • Notifications can be a useful way to get updates on orders/service but should not be excessive.

  • Users wanted to be able to take action from the device list.

 

CONCLUSION:

Our interviews validated a desire for customers to independently place rental orders and manage devices through the BioMed portal. This should lead to significant financial savings (through customer service efficiencies) as well as an increase in rental/Services revenues.

 

Iterations

Mandatory Accessories

DESIGN SPRINT PROTOTYPE:

  • During our user testing, it was clear the users were confused by the mandatory accessories.

  • They were confused by their purpose and also by the quantity in their carts at checkout.

FIRST ITERATION:

  • Make the mandatory accessories more obvious on the results page

    • give a more visually defined section

    • add photos

  • Separate the quantities in the cart

    • show that they will not be charged for accessories

    • confirms that they are ordering the correct number of devices

SECOND ITERATION:

  • Adding more messaging to explain that mandatory accessories are included in the price

  • Adding a modal to let the user have a choice to add the accessories to the cart or opt-out

  • De-emphasize the mandatory accessories in the cart.

    • show the information, but exclude the photos.

    • have the information in the same section as the device it is related to.

Device List

DESIGN SPRINT PROTOTYPE:

  • Quick read-only section to see information on the devices currently rented and their statuses.

  • Follows a similar style to other lists the client has in other applications.

SECOND ITERATION:

  • Simplify this page to make it more

  • Give them actions that they can initiate directly from this page.

 
 

CHALLENGES:

  • Design Sprint being virtual. One of my main concerns was that we might have people who wouldn’t contribute as much and be distracted by other work.

  • Our Decision Maker seemed to be skeptical of the validity/value of the Design Sprint. She didn’t seem sure that we could get much accomplished in four days.

  • Notifications ended up being out of scope for development. We needed to strip a lot of the notification features in order to meet the Q4 deadline.

  • During the development project, I had to accommodate the needs of Marketing as well. We couldn’t focus solely on the users like we were able to do during the Design Sprint. I had to come up with ways to meet their requests without sacrificing the needs of the users.

    • This included things like more advertisement space and pushes for the users to upgrade to the paid version of the BioMed Portal.

Lessons Learned & Next Steps

 

RESULTS:

I received word in April this year, that our pilot program had been launched and the first orders had been placed successfully! So we know we have to answer to our two Sprint questions. We were able to accomplish the customized reporting and pricing by their Q4. We were also able to make the portal easy to utilize so that our users didn’t go back to relying on their Sales Representatives.

 

We will have to stay tuned to see if we accomplish our long-term goal:

“In 2 years time, the self-service portal will result in a significant financial savings (customer service efficiencies) as well as an increase in rental/services revenue.”