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Study Marketplace
An overview of the user UX tasks and deliverables for
Study Marketplace I created at Elligo Health Research.
Click the Desktop Computer
to view the Study Marketplace
Product: Study Marketplace Software As A Service
Project Type: UI / UX Design
Roles: UX / Information Architecture, UX Research, UI / UX Design,
Wireframing / Prototyping, Salesforce Design, Clinical Research SAAS,
E Commerce Design, Persona / Journeymapping,
Workshop Hosting / Affinity Diagramming, Startup / Inhouse
SCOPE
Elligo enables clinical trials through electronic health record data, a proprietary IntElligo®â€¯ technology, and direct access to millions of known, diverse patients from more than 115 hospitals and major health systems, 200 healthcare-based sites, and 100 research-based sites.
The IntElligo® Study Marketplace is a one-stop platform to accelerate participation in clinical research and allows sites to manage their entire research pipeline process on one user-friendly portal.
PROBLEM
Today, Account Managers at Elligo are having a hard time managing the feasibility process when trying to understand if a clinical research facility has the resources available to hold a clinical trial that the clinical research facility is applying for. Feasibility questionnaires are getting lost and misplaced in emails, which is causing clinical research sites to fill out these questionnaires late and not be awarded trials and in return, these clinical research sites are being dropped from the Elligo Health Network due to funding issues. Clinical research physicians are also having a hard time streamlining this process and filling out the questionnaires as account managers are disorganized.
SOLUTION
Following a Lean Agile Methodology on a sprint cycle, I began by gathering qualitative and quantitative research through workshops and user interviews. This process will include sitting with Trial Placement Account Managers, Clinical Research Physicians, and Study Coordinators, and asking them questions such as what their wants, needs, goals, pain points, and motivations are when enduring the Trial Placement Feasibility Process, which helps determine if a clinical research site is fit to host a clinical trial. Then I will create deliverables such as user personas from the conducted user interviews. These personas will influence user flows journey maps / product flows, wireframes, and prototypes. I will also be working with a project manager who will help with note taking and affinity diagramming.
RESEARCH
RESEARCH PLAN
I began the UX Lean Agile process by creating an information request to give to my project manager to see what UX artifacts were available and what kind of background information I could get about the current feasibility process. After the information request had been given back to me by my project manager, I came to the realization there was no recorded journey maps or personas and that the journey and users weren't understood at all. So I decided to hold an SME (Subject Matter Expert) workshop to understand both.
After the information request, I set up a meeting with 1 Trial Placement Account Manager SME to understand the feasibility process so I could map a current state journey of what their current process was. I documented this journey mapping session in Miro so that it could be apart of the future workshop.
After talking with the Trial Placement Account Manager, I understood that Trial Placement Account Managers were building feasibility questionnaires in checkbox and then sending the Clinical Research Physicians the questionnaires in an email and then the Study Coordinators were filling out the questionnaires, then the Clinical Research Physician would check the feasibility questionnaire for accuracy before sending it back to the Trial Placement Account Manager. So a workshop was held with more Trial Placement Account Manager SMES, Clinical Research Physicians, and Study Coordinators, to talk about the current state feasibility process and assess what a future state feasibility process could look like so the process could be streamlined.
After completing the workshop with the SME Trial Placement Account Managers, Clinical Research Physicians, and Study Coordinators, I was sent a list of Trial Placement Account Managers, Clinical Research Physicians, and Study Coordinators that are apart of the feasibility process so that I could start recruiting for user interviews. That being said, I created a recruitment tracker, recruitment email template, and an interview script to accurately gather and assess information. I invited all of the interviewees in an email to sign up for time slots using Mircosoft Teams Booking.
After the user interviews with Trial Placement Account Managers, Clinical Research Coordinators, and Study Coordinators had been held, my project manager and I also listened to pipeline calls Trial Placement Account Managers and Clinical Research Physicians were having about whats going on in their research pipeline. The data was then recorded in MIRO, where the data was Affinity Diagrammed and sorted into themes. Then the sorted data was recorded in an Excel sheet.
After all of the individual user data was recorded into the excel sheets, key findings were understood and those findings were used to create the Trial Placement Account Manager, Clinical Research Physician, and Study Coordinator User Personas. These User Personas were then used when mapping out the future state journeys that each of these personas were taking throughout the feasibility process.
KEY FINDINGS TRIAL PLACEMENT ACCOUNT MANAGERS
RESEARCH CONDUCTED: User Interviews for ​
User Personas / Journey Mapping
AGE RANGE: 30 - 41
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Create a feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace for the study based off of sponsor requirements and be able to send that study to multiple sites Principal Investigators applying for that study.
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Receiving and reviewing feasibility questionnaire submissions from Clinical Research Physicians to evaluate a sites competency in that studies therapeutic area.
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Compile site submissions and send to the sponsor so that the sponsor can decide which sites can move forward to a pre study visit.
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Wants a study timeline history for visibility into the interested, submitted, awarded, and contracted phases of a study.
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Wants automating questionnaires to pre-populate feasibility questionnaires based on previously created feasibility questionnaires.
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Need to be able to create feasibility questionnaires in Study Marketplace and send those questionnaires to sites with a form builder
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Need Ability to pull responses by site from 1 or more sites and export them to be compiled and sent to the sponsor.
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Turn around time sending out feasibility questionnaires and Principal Investigators filling them out is not sufficient, emails get lost in the mix.
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Feasibility process changes per study, it's not consistent.
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Missed opportunities because of bad communication is causing missed revenue.
​
KEY FINDINGS
Clinical Research Physician
RESEARCH CONDUCTED: User Interviews for
User Personas / Journey Mapping
AGE RANGE: 36 - 61
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Apply for a study in Study Marketplace from Trial Placement Account manager.
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Receive feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace to fill out from Trial Placement.
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Give the feasibility questionnaire to the Study Coordinator at the site to fill out.
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Review the feasibility questionnaire answers and once approved, send those answers to the Trial Placement Account Manager.
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Wants a dashboard to show what study feasibility questionnaire needs to be completed, the outcome, rejection letter from sponsor, different therapeutic area, and what studies they have seen so far in last quarter.
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Wants to have a Feedback loop on status of a study to have visibility into the contracting
of a study. -
Needs to have the Protocol/Synopsis for a study on the Study Marketplace study details page.
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Needs a notification center for study status updates, both email and text notifications would be helpful once a week.
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When the email comes from Trial Placement Feasibility Account managers to complete feasibility questionnaires, she gets confused if she is supposed to finish the task in email or Study Marketplace.
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She doesn’t know the status of where the site stands in the trial contracting process after submitting a feasibility questionnaire.
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The current workflow for the feasibility process is confusing.
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KEY FINDINGS Study Coordinator
RESEARCH CONDUCTED: User Interviews for ​
User Personas / Journey Mapping
AGE RANGE: 26 - 32
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Receive feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace to fill out from Trial Placement Account Manager.
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Fill our feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace.
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Have Clinical Research Physician review the feasibility questionnaire answers before submitting to Trial Placement Account Manager.
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Wants a dashboard to show what study feasibility questionnaire needs to be completed, the outcome, rejection letter from sponsor, different therapeutic area, and what studies they have seen so far in last quarter.
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Wants to know the number of patients that are going to be in a study.
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Needs to have the Protocol/Synopsis for a study on the Study Marketplace study details page.
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Needs to keep a copy of the feasibility questionnaire submitted for a study for documentation purposes.
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Gets frustrated when the Clinical Research Physician doesn’t give timely feedback on feasibility questionnaires or no feedback at all.
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No structured standardized operating procedure for feasibility process and getting information approved by Clinical Research Physicians. Some Clinical Research Physicians are more helpful than others at sites when it comes to the feasibility process.
User Personas
From the Trial Placement Account Manager, Clinical Research Physician, and Study Coordinator key findings, I created visual user personas as an empathy reference.
FUTURE STATE JOURNEY MAP
From the Trial Placement Account Manager, Clinical Research Physician, and Study Coordinator key findings, I created visual user journey map to show how the Trial Placement Account Manager, Clinical Research Physician, and Study Coordinator, interact in their employee ecosystem from the beginning to end of the feasibility questionnaire process.
Design + Interaction
Form Builder Design Process
After understanding the journey of the Trial Placement Account Manager and that this persona needs to be able to build a feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace, copy the link of that form, upload the link to a sites tasks section through salesforce, and be able to receive site responses to feasibility questionnaires and download them. I began to gather inspiration to design a form builder as well as create sketches. These sketches will be based off of components that I can use from our Material UI library to create new Study Marketplace components with Elligo Study Marketplace branding. After I was completed sketching the form builder, I began to design the Form Builder in Figma after receiving a design ticket in Jira.
After I designed the Form Builder in Figma, the Form Builder was usability tested on Trial Placement Account Managers. The Trial Placement Account Managers found the process of building a form in Study Marketplace and creating a task in salesforce for a site, to be easier then the previous process of using checkbox to create the form, emailing the checkbox link to the site user to fill out the feasibility questionnaire, and then emailing the principal investigator again to check in on the progress of filling out the questionnaire.
RECEIVING A FEASIBILITY QUESTIONNAIRE IN
STUDY MARKETPLACE TASKS
DESIGN PROCESS
After understanding the journey of the Clinical Research Physician / Principal Investigator and that this persona needs to be able to receive a feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace from the Trial Placement Account Manager, hand off the feasibility questionnaire to the Study Coordinator to fill out, then the Principal Investigator sends the filled out feasibility questionnaire back to the Trial Placement Account Manager. I began to gather inspiration to design what receiving a feasibility questionnaire task could look like. These sketches will be based off of components that I can use from our Material UI library to create new Study Marketplace components with Elligo Study Marketplace branding. After I was completed sketching tasks, I began to design tasks in Figma after receiving a design ticket in Jira with the specifications.
After I designed what tasks could look like, receiving a feasibility questionnaire task was usability tested on Clinical Research Physicians / Principal Investigators as well as Study Coordinators. Clinical Research Physicians / Principal Investigators and Study Coordinators found the process of filling out a feasibility questionnaire task in Study Marketplace to be easier than the previous process of receiving the feasibility questionnaire as a checkbox link, filling out the questionnaire in checkbox, and sending the filled out questionnaire link back to the Trial Placement Account Manager. Receiving the feasibility questionnaire task in Study Marketplace proved to be much easier than all of the email communication that was going on.
SUBMITTING SITE RESPONSES
DESIGN PROCESS
After understanding the journey of the Trial Placement Account Manager and that this persona needs to be able to build a feasibility questionnaire in Study Marketplace, copy the link of that form, upload the link to a sites tasks section through salesforce, and be able to receive feasibility questionnaire responses from sites and download them. I began to gather inspiration to design a site responses tab within the forms left hand menu item in Study Marketplace as well as create sketches. These sketches will be based off of components that I can use from our Material UI library to create new Study Marketplace components with Elligo Study Marketplace branding. After I was completed sketching the site responses tab within the forms left hand menu item, I began to design the site responses section in Figma after receiving a design ticket in Jira.
After I designed the site responses tab within forms in Figma, site responses was usability tested on Trial Placement Account Managers. The Trial Placement Account Managers found the process of receiving feasibility questionnaire site responses in Study Marketplace and downloading them as excel files to package and send to the sponsor, to be easier then the previous process of receiving a large quantity of feasibility questionnaire checkbox links from various sites, then sending the links to the sponsor.
VISUAL DESIGN ELEMENTS
COMPONENTS
(NOT ALL ARE SHOWN)
ICONOGRAPHY
(NOT ALL ARE SHOWN)
TYPOGRAPHY
FINAL DESIGNS
WHAT I LEARNED
From the initial business development meeting regarding feasibility and that feasibility was causing Elligo debt, to understanding the feasibility process current state, to hosting the workshop with Trial Placement, Clinical Research Physicians / Principal Investigators, and Study Coordinator SMES, to hosting user interviews and affinity diagramming the findings to draw conclusions about what the pain points, wants, needs, and goals of the users involved in the feasibility process whether directly or indirectly involved, to designing an entire new journey in Study Marketplace for the users involved in feasibility.
I learned a lot about the entire feasibility process of how clinical research sites get awarded clinical drug trials in the clinical research process and the process of how a clinical research site qualified or didn't qualify for a clinical trial. I like solving problems and found the process very enjoyable as I had discovered a very effective way to reduce the feasibility process efforts. This problem was one of many that I solved on my journey at Elligo Health Research and I look forward to solving many more problems in the years to come.
View the entire Trial Placement Account Manager Journey, The Clinical Physician / Principal Investigator and Study Coordinator Journey, or visit the website where Study Marketplace is Hosted.
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