The pharmaceutical company’s product is an informational hub for scientific content on clinical trials. As the user base grew, the original design failed to maintain engagement and relevance. We undertook a redesign to enhance usability and foster a stronger sense of belonging while ensuring the site was both modern and aligned with brand guidelines. Our focus was on improving feature visibility, simplifying flows, and reducing clicks.
MY ROLE
Responsible for UX assessments, primary & desk research, its analysis, conceptualizing ideas, designing wireframes
THE TEAM
1 Principal Designer, 2 UX Designers, 1 Visual Designer
TIMELINE
8 weeks
April – May 2024
OVERVIEW OF THE PRODUCT
What are the products about?
The company offers two healthcare products that serve as resource hubs for clinical trials. They are designed to improve the visibility and accessibility of data from ClinicalTrials.gov. The platforms help find relevant trial information and explore treatment options efficiently.
Why have two separate products for the same purpose?
Clinical Trials
Features trials from all sources including companies and individual researchers
Clinical Trials & Research
Features only the company’s sponsored trials
Provides information on the company’s research pathways
What’s the vision?
The company launched these products offering a comprehensive, easy, and customized search experience for clinical trials. The products aim to be the go-to resource for healthcare practitioners, researchers, doctors, and patients, with the long-term goal of connecting the right patients to the right trials.
ABOUT THE CLIENT
Why are clinical trials & research crucial for the company?
The company is a multinational biopharmaceutical leader whose mission is to discover, develop, and deliver innovative medicines that help patients prevail over serious diseases. Clinical trials and research are critical to bringing new medicines to patients providing data on the efficacy and safety of medicines.
USERS
Who are the users of these products?
Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are the primary users of these products. They work with industries to benefit patients. They attend medical conferences where the company showcases its product. During this, they exchange information about clinical trials with drug and device developers. Further, they refer their patients to the appropriate ongoing trials.
START OF THE JOURNEY
Which product to focus on?
Users can expect similar functionality, navigation, and workflows across both products because they share the same structure and are owned by the same company. However, the primary distinction between the two platforms will lie in their content & visual design.
The focus for research and design efforts is on the Clinical Trials product, which attracts more user visits due to its larger sample size of trials from various sources.
PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED
What are the problems to solve for?
The platform has been losing its relevance for a long time. Users are not spending enough time engaging with content and interacting with multiple features. Here’s how:
- Minimal engagement on the platform – The bounce rate is 43.29% and the average session duration is 2 min 12 sec (Feb 2024) despite being a content hub
- Poor search experience – Search lacks personalization and the search logic is limited considering the varied query types used
- Challenges in finding the trial of interest – Multi-step process to use filters, and large trial cards requires excessive scrolling in search results
- No sense of belonging to the platform – Users do not sign up, resulting in an insignificant returning users—out of 5836 total users, 5757 are new users (Feb 2024)
- Poor visibility, complexity, unawareness of platform features – Suboptimal use of customization features like My Preferred Trials, My Saved Trials, and Saved Filters
- Issues in navigation and design flaws – Friction in the experience, poor navigation, insignificant chart, unappealing design with inconsistency, slow loading time
