The Product Team
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1 UI Designer
1 UX Designer1 Industrial Designers
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Project duration: 2 years
Project duration: 2 years
"Single-use mixers have significantly sped up the process of mixing ingredients in pharmaceutical production, reducing the time to market for vital drugs and vaccines."
Overview
Biologics manufacturing has seen many new developments in recent years. The industry is moving away from processing systems based on stainless steel (with cleaning and validation requirements) to single-use systems (sterilized, disposable plastics).
The last 20 years have seen a rapid growth in the development of therapeutic molecules and biologics. In addition to the expansion of mAb production, the industrialization of gene therapies and the growth of new vaccine platforms also share many of the same process challenges. In order to translate these molecules into clinical and commercial success, manufacturers are looking to increase production efficiency, lower production costs and accelerate the development of manufacturing processes.
The Challenge
I worked with a UX designer to transfer our design philosophy to a new business segment - Thermo Scientific. This would also be the first time a module containing a touch screen interface would be used on individual mixers. From a UX perspective, we needed to understand the work flows of a DeltaV platform, usually used on a larger computer located in the lab, and translate those ideas into our "mobile first" way of thinking. I was key to helping make that happen. Then, from a visual design standpoint, I needed to create a new set of components that matched the overall colors and branding of other Thermo Scientific products.
Filtering and Acknowledging Alarms
Here is an example of initial wireframes for the alarms, followed by the final visualized versions below that. Alarms are hugely important in this line of work as PH and Conductivity need to stay within the guide lines that are specific to that mixture. If temperatures or PH balances stray from those set points, it can cause problems for that whole batch. It could go bad. Anytime an alarm goes off, the user has to acknowledge that they saw it and fixed it.
Example of Adding Bolus
Here is an example of what it looks like adding a bolus. I was able to incorporate our iconic dial. Adding components like this help make the product fit more with the brand. Plus, it's important for flows to feel similar from instrument to instrument. That sense of familiarity is important, as our users usually have more than 1 of our instruments on hand.
Style Guides Created
Here is the finalized style guide that I created for the team, helping feed and guide the engineers building the final product.
