[Alto 2.0] Merging of the Embedded Software

Nicoya

Overview

Nicoya is a small biotech company specializing in developing Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) instruments to help life science scientists in their research. Alto, their flagship product, is the world’s first digital SPR instrument that helps reduce the barrier to entry for scientists to use this technology by automating complicated processes and easy-to-use designs. The Alto platform consists of a web app where scientists can design and analyze their experiments, and an embedded software that allows scientists to run their designed experiments.

The Alto solution needed to go through a complete re-architecture and this effort was the Alto 2.0 project. The purpose of this re-architecture was to enable the scalability of the platform as the current code base could not support any additional features. This project consisted of a series of min-projects, each a redesign of one of the main features.

One mini-project was to merge the embedded software, also known as the control software, from the Alto instrument to the Alto portal, a web app.

The goal was to redesign the control software to ensure a consistent and seamless experience across the platform by having both the control and web app speak the same language and use components/assets from the same design system. This was achieved through rebranding to light UI and improved navigation and user flows for the MVP release.

My Role

I was the sole designer leading this project (March 2022, two weeks) gathering user insights from previous user research, feedback from internal scientist teams, developing and adding new assets to the Alto design system, iterating on current designs and presenting design concepts and solutions to key stakeholders. I worked with multi-functional teams that included three product managers, four software engineers, four internal scientists, and two hardware engineers.

The Problem

One of the core problems was that the Alto control software on the instrument had a completely different feel and look compared to the Alto portal. We’ve heard from scientists that they felt like they were using two different softwares throughout their user journey of designing their experiment on a laptop to running on Alto. We’ve also heard from scientists that there was a lot of information the first screen of the run workflow to select and run their experiment. Scientists should be able to seamlessly move from laptop to instrument and easily find and run their experiments with confidence.

Business Problem:

This project stemmed from the need to re-architect the Alto software due to it’s lack of scalability, however, another big problem was that our distributors in Russia and China couldn’t demo the instrument to potential customers because it was only available on cloud (online) mode. Through merging the control software with the portal, we needed to address the need for scientists and distributors to run their instruments online and offline (Local mode).

Goal

Solution

Introducing a new Home view

• Simplify and reduce cognitive load: introducing a new Home view to help scientists quickly select their tasks and prevent them from feeling overwhelmed when first stepping up to the instrument.
• Organizing by projects: organizing experiments under the Run tab, which groups experiments by projects the scientists select during the Design phase.
• Detailed Overview: when an experiment is selected, an overview opens to show the same experiment details scientists see when they design their experiment, which provides them with the information to decide whether to run or not.

Rebranding to Light Mode

• Consistency: the Run feature, previously all designed in dark mode, was rebranded to light UI designs to help make the experience from laptop to instrument consistent and increase familiarity.
• Increased accessibility: improved accessibility through better colour contrasts and typography in the UI and reduced screen glares.
• Design system: components and assets updated to match the rest of the Alto design system to facilitate a delightful overall experience throughout the whole user journey.

Local & Cloud Mode

• Admin access: Customer Admins and Distributors are able to easily turn on Local (offline) mode to demo/run experiments without having to join a local network and meet compliance requirements.
• Communicating system status: clear indication of the connection status and when last synced is communicated to the admins/distributors.
• Scalability: access to ‘Sync’ (Cloud vs Local toggle) is available under the settings tab in the global nav for quick access and also allows room for future features to be included (such as brightness, bluetooth, wifi etc.)

Design Approach

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY (SUMMER 2021)

Back in 2021, post beta release, we noticed that there were accessibility issues with the dark UI design on the instrument screen. The main indication was the glares on the screen that made information or data difficult to see. We wanted to ensure that important experimental data was visible for scientists under bright lights of a typical lab.

I conducted an environmental study, taking the Alto instrument into various environments that mimicked lighting conditions scientists worked in:

• A brightly lit lab room with no windows but fluorescent lights
• A brightly lit lab room with large windows

EXISTING INSIGHTS

For this project, there was not enough time and resources to conduct any user studies. Therefore, I looked to find existing insights from previously conducted user research studies.

CHALLENGES

🔗  Local & Cloud

An unexpected and urgent need for Local (offline) mode feature was brought up during a meeting between engineering, product and design.

Why?: Distributors working in China and Russia needed to be able to demo Alto instruments locally because they could not connect to other networks.

A new problem arose from this new feature and requirements needed to be quickly gathered and defined.

New problem: “What do we show on device vs laptop when they’re side by side?”

I collaborated closely with Product Managers, Engineers, and Sales to problem solve how we would offer local mode and what that experience looked like, as well as, compliance aspects. We focused on main tasks that scientists wanted to perform on each device and avoided showing repetitive information that did not add value or meaning to their experience.

⏱  Shortage in Dev Time

Our lead architecture engineer came to me and our product managers to communicate that there was not enough time and resources to develop anymore new components for this project in order to meet the deadlines, and requested we reuse as much of the components and assets we had in our design system for the Run feature redesign.

I worked with product managers to brainstorm and ideate concepts using different components in our design system, and ensuring that the value and experience would not be compromised with this decision.

IDEATION

Reviewing the User Journey

I worked closely with two product managers to review our current user journey and identify and key areas we needed to improve on and to priorities these needs for MVP or include into backlog.

From here we worked on writing out the full requirements for the Run feature.

Information Architecture

For the information architecture, we looked at the new navigation bar and the routes scientists could take to easily access their primary and secondary tasks. We also considered pathways to future features on the roadmap that will need to be added and ensured that the IA was scalable.

User Flow

Explorations

Together with product managers, we started to brainstorm ideas by reviewing existing components and assets to include into the Run user flows, and rapidly iterating on the different concepts we came up with.

We also worked closely with our lead architect to ensure technical feasibility of the ideas and the development times.

Final Solution

Before / Methods (experiments)

After / Home & Experiments

Before / Load Cartridge

After / Insert Cartridge

Before / Samples

After / Samples

Before / Live Run

After / Live Run

Results

With the redesign, scientists can seamlessly transition from laptop to Alto and back, and quickly select and run tasks seamlessly on Alto. I did not get to see this project launch while I was still at Nicoya, however key metrics to track are the % decrease in development time as this project should help engineers further develop the run feature more easily and efficiently and % increase in ROI with the local mode enabling distributors to demo the instrument to more prospective customers.

If I had more time…

If I had more time, I would love to explore more concepts for the Home view as I did not have enough time to explore much during this project. I would then like to A|B test top two solutions to ensure we are providing the most value for scientists in their first interactions with Alto. Also, I would like to run usability studies with the proposed solution to validate that scientists' needs are being met and that we were able to successfully tackle and solve some of the accessibility issues we had in our prior designs.

Reflections

💪  We’re stronger together

With the complex challenges that arose throughout this project, I learned that brainstorming and working through the problem space with others is possibly the best way to bring in different perspectives and overcome challenges using innovative ideas.

🤝  Learn to compromise

When our lead architect came to us to say that we had essentially no time for new designs and we had to make due with what we had, I learned to first ask ‘why’ and after better understanding the situation, work together with others to problem solve a solution that didn’t lose the integrity of the user’s experience and helped the project succeed.