Study Manager

  • 2016-2018
  • Project Lead
  • Emulate

The Study Manager was a product I conceived of and designed at Emulate that helps cell biologist working with Organs-on-Chips to manage, plan, and execute their experimental studies, while also creating a centralized digital repository for all data generated from those studies, enabling future data science efforts.

I was the primary designer and project lead for this product, having developed it out of an exploratory design discovery process. Over the course of a year, I created refined designs and developed the larger strategy for the product eventually handing the project off to a design and development team for prototyping.

The purpose of this project was twofold: first, it was to provide biologists with software tools to help manage their experimental design and execution; second, it was to create ways to standardize data collection and experimental processes across the company

Design

The main design challenge with this project involved balancing the need for standardized data formats and the varied and personalized workflows of biologists. The design process also revealed tensions between the ideal scientific process and the process practiced in labs, where the realities of doing cell biology conflict with ideal experimental design. 

UI design of the Create New Study page
UI design of the Define Experimental Groups page
UI design of the Experimental Timeline page
UI design of Adding Readouts to a Study
UI design of the Individal Task page

Strategy

While developing this app, I also worked to articulate a larger vision that imagined the Study Manager as one app among many that would together provide an integrated software suite to accompany the physical products.

Diagram outlining vision of the Study Manager
Storyboards of imagined use of the Study Manager
Diagram listing key outcomes of the Study Manager