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AMBAR DEKOK-MERCADO
AMBAR DEKOK-MERCADO
 

Workflow Management in StudyTeam for Sites

Improving Site to Sponsor Communications

 
 
 
 
 

StudyTeam for Sites is a patient recruitment and patient enrollment software for clinical research organizations (sites)

A human looking at a laptop screen viewing OneStudyTeam Software

Learn more about OneStudy Team for Sites here.

A system designed to enroll studies as quickly as possible, StudyTeam for Sites makes sharing progress data with Sponsors and Clinical Research Organizations easier.  

Clinical Research Organizations(CROS) are contracted by sponsors (pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies) to provide sponsors with research management services. Traditional CROs provide clinical trial management services, while laboratory CROs provide drug discovery, manufacturing, laboratory, and bio-analytical services.

 
 
 

How can we increase the efficiency and frequency of data being exchanged between Sites & Sponsors?

 
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Post-its are great…until they’re not.

A Little Bit of Background

During the clinical research study life cycle, many site users (Clinical Research Coordinators, Study Managers, Principal Investigators, Research Nurses, etc.) need to collaborate and coordinate with their colleagues in order to complete the trial cycle.

In order to properly manage work plans, reporting, and timelines, many site users utilize task management tools such as paper, spreadsheets, and other software tools.

 
 
 

Identifying Key Pain Points

From conversations with our Sites and Sponsors, we identified the following key pain points/insights f

 
 

Sites

Sites mentioned time-consuming data entry in multiple locations, to-do lists that keep getting longer, and are difficult to manage across multiple tools and applications. “I don’t have time to do data entry in multiple locations and return my Sponsor’s calls.”

Sponsors

Sponsors complained that sites are not updating and reporting critical data. “My sites aren’t returning my calls. I’m not getting the data I need.”

 
 

Current State of the Product

Capabilities of the product, at the start of the re-design analysis, were as follows:

 
 

Task Management

Users can create tasks within StudyTeam. The task feature allows team members to assign to-dos to themselves or to team members, and attach relevant data and notes.

Based on quantitative product usage data, we can see this feature is rarely used, and if it is, users tend to create tasks but not complete them. Currently, the application does not remind them or notify them of unfinished tasks.

 

Notifications and Reminders

Customers are only able to unsubscribe from email notifications via the email themselves, and cannot set global notifications settings in a preference service

 
 
 

Hypothesis

We developed the follow hypothesis based on our research insights and product analysis.

“If we improve workflow management, and reduce stress over things to do and report, in the StudyTeam eco-system, we can improve the frequency and efficiency of data being reported back to Sponsors.”
— Product Hypothesis

My Role

 

  • As design lead, work closely with product managers and developers (product trio) regarding project scope and requirements.

  • Customer research, analysis, and insights reporting.

  • Iterative design cycles involving various cycles of usability testing.

  • Market analysis and product research regarding best practices in workflow management tools (notifications, user preferences, email reminders, and more).

  • Consistent and close knit collaboration with team members utilizing Agile workflow methodologies (consistent and iterative feedback loops). Involved technical leads, developers, stakeholders and product owners in design reviews, feedback cycles, and research synthesis discussions.

  • Detailed hand-off of final development specs, and hands-on involvement in testing and QA.

 
 

My Collaborators

Sophia Son - Lead Product Manager

Charlot Shaw - Software Engineer

Luke Renn - Technical Lead/Staff Software Engineer

Betty Lin - Design Support

 

Timeline

5 months +

 
 
 
 

Project Index

 
 
 
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Photo of a laptop featuring a zoom call with various people and an empty mug. by Tirza van Dijk on Unsplash.

Discovery

 

Initial Discovery

As part of our research and discovery, we had several regenerative discovery sessions with stakeholders and customers. These calls were focused on understanding what individuals are doing to get the job done today.

 
 

Customer Team (OneStudyTeam)

The customer team currently has to manually subscribe and unsubscribe customers to various emails. This is a time-consuming process.

“I wish our customers could opt in and out of emails themselves, without me needing to go into the system for them.”

Customers (Sites)

Customers don’t use the tasks feature in the site application because there is no way for them to set a reminder, due date, or notification.

“If I receive too many emails, I get overwhelmed. It’s a lot of noise and I end up just missing a lot of them or not even opening them.”

 
 
Photo by Tirza van Dijk on Unsplash of a figma design file on a laptop.

Initial Design Proposal

 

Based on our discovery sessions, we proposed and scoped out the following solutions across various initiatives.

 

Proposed Product Solutions

 

Task Management

Based on the feedback that site application users don’t use the task management feature due to the inability to create reminders and set custom notifications, we started exploring injecting these enhancements into the current feature.

Notifications and Reminders

Customers are only able to unsubscribe from emails via the email themselves, and cannot set global notifications settings in a preference service. To remedy this, we started exploring ways for users to be able to set their own settings and preferences for their trial communications.

 
 

Product Insight Guideposts

Throughout our several design iterations, validation, and testing – we also kept the following insights into focus:

“Users should always feel in control of their notifications”
— Insight #1
“When everything is important, nothing is important”
— Insight #2

Leveraging Recognized & Validated Design Patterns

Rather than reinvent the wheel, we applied existing and validated interaction notification patterns.

 
 

Some of the products referenced in my interaction market research

 
 

MVP Designs

 

Task Management Feature

 

[LEFT IMAGE] Previous product UI.
[RIGHT IMAGE] The highlighted area at the bottom (in teal) marks where the UI was enhanced (see below).

 

First Iterative Release

After various feedback cycles and iterative user testing, we worked with our copywriters on finessing concise copy for the following first-release designs.

 
 

See my working Figma file here to see iterations & prototypes used for testing and validation.

 
 

Visit Reminders

 

See my working Figma file here to see iterations & prototypes used for testing and validation.

After the task reminders feature was released and well received by users, we applied the same pattern to a different feature, the visit scheduler, with some additional enhancements.

These enhancements had been previously usability tested but did not make it into the initial task management scope for the first release.

 
 

User Preferences

Entry Point

After analyzing various entry points and locations in the app, we decided on a global location for the user settings and preferences. This entry point allows users to access their settings and preferences, no matter what site or trial they are logged into.

This location defines a solid UX foundation and anticipates the scaling of a fully flushed-out preference service that will include other things like calendar settings and integrations.

To see view additional logic behind this decision, you can peak at more flows here.

 
 
 
 

Trials

Once a user selects, ‘My Settings’, they land on their Trials page. Here users can indicate which trials they are actively working on. Users will not receive email notifications and reminders for trials indicted as in-active.

 
 
 

Email Preferences

Under Email Preferences, users can select what types of emails they’d like to receive for the trials they are actively working on.

This greatly improves previous processes, which required a manual opt-in and opt-out process between the customer team and customers for individual emails.

 
 
 

Interaction flows for user preferences development discussion and hand-off

 
 
 

See my working Figma file here to see iterations & more prototypes used for testing and validation.

 
 

Email Standardization

In an effort to standardize and unify our branding across product emails, I spearheaded documentating guidelines for design, product, and development.

View my design documentation here.

 

Email Design Assets & Guidelines

The following assets and guidelines were created and shared in Confluence company wide.

 
 
 
 

Product email examples (new guidelines applied)

 
 
 

In Conclusion

These features influenced an overall increase in user adoption and engagement, with a 391.7% change in unique email opens leading to 80.9% change in updated patient logs out of 89.3% of accounts.