COPY Modernist Studio Internship
During the summer of 2022, I interned at Modernist Studio, a design consulting agency located in Austin, Texas, whose clients include Meta, Dell, Microsoft, Bank of America, the University of Texas, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
My time at Modernist consisted of working with designers, product managers, and engineers on desktop and mobile experiences as a design consultant for two clients: a silicon valley, series B start-up for childcare services and a software company for pharmaceutical clinical trial data.
EdTech Client
For the childcare services start-up, I worked on the child care management system designing desktop and mobile experiences for a parent portal dashboard, mobile student filtering for centers, childcare center portal dashboard, and crucial file manager experience which will implemented in a future release.
Health-tech Client
For my second client, the clinical trial software company, I designed a new supervisor dashboard for tracking clinical trial study progress and home screen for data analysis getting buy in from high-level stakeholders.
Role
UX Design Intern
Duration
3 months,
Summer 2022
Tools
Figma
With
1 Product Manager
1 UX Designer
2 Engineers
Project 1
Supervisor Dashboard
I worked on the Supervisor Dashboard designs for internal eClinical workers managing data managers of clinical data. For the designs, I condensed multiple levels of organization (clinical programs, studies, and individuals) and statistics in an easily navigable experience. I designed wireframes, flows, and prototypes for both finalized and MVP versions of the platform, iterated upon feedback from the client, and pitched final designs to the client. Moreover, I added nested components that were essential and comprehensive of various states to the design library.
Client
eClinical Solutions
Timeline
4 weeks
Tools
Figma
Team
1 Product Manager, 1 UX Designer, 2 Engineers
The Problem
The current Elluminate platform feels like a collection of individual products, and there is a lack of cohesion and grounding.
Because of the modular nature of the current UI, Supervisors of data analysts can't discovering the states of clinical study progress from an overall perspective, making it difficult to properly manage data analysts and assign appropriate tasks.
Impact
Research
Designs set to be implemented in a future release and aided in driving the initiative of transforming the product to be landing/home experience based.
Before creating designs and wireframes for the Supervisor Dashboard, I researched existing management applications to understand what kind of information would be helpful for supervisors. Since the product is focused on clinical data management, the research on general management dashboards was not directly applicable, but it helped me think about potential features and visualizations.
Products Researched: Jira, Asana, Toggl, Notion
The Solution
A home experience that provides statistics on groups of clinical studies at a high level with the ability to drill down to data on specific studies and data analysts which provides an at-a-glance status and method of identifying points of intervention.
The current Elluminate platform feels like a collection of individual products, and there is a lack of cohesion and grounding. Supervisors of data analysts have a hard time discovering the states of clinical study progress from overall perspective because of the module nature of the current UI. This makes it difficult for them to properly manage data analysts and assign appropriate tasks.
The Problem
The Problem
The current Elluminate platform feels like a collection of individual products, and there is a lack of cohesion and grounding.
Because of the modular nature of the current UI, Supervisors of data analysts can't discovering the states of clinical study progress from an overall perspective, making it difficult to properly manage data analysts and assign appropriate tasks.
Main Insights
From the research, I gathered that displaying graphics of data to show team progress helps communicate statistics in a non-complex manner.
Some features I thought were interesting and gave good insight to the status of the team was a bar chart of all the team member's assigned tasks and the percentage they finished with filtering abilities, task tracking through status of completion, and team member profiles that display progress statistics.
Design Iterations
Created and prototyped 15+ robust iterations for the supervisor dashboard experience and made improvements from client feedback and guidance from design directors at Modernist Studio.
Final Design
Reflection
At the start of this project, I was thrown into a product that was very foreign to me. The Elluminate platform works with the regulations and system of the FDA clinical trial system, which was a topic I had no experience with. Grappling with little context of the problem space but reframing my mindset to the needs of an unfamiliar audience was a skill I gained quickly from working on this project. I learned to ask important and essential questions to the client and how to design products without knowing all the details.
This was the first project that I rigorously used and contributed to a design system/design library, and I learned about UX design principles and product sense thinking from the Design Director on the project. For the MVP version that would go out to the development team, I created detailed documentation for developers so the designs could stand on their own by adding notes to explain aspects of components thoroughly along with documented component states.
eClinical Solutions - 2 weeks
Objective List for Data Analyst Role
On the platform for data analysts users (the people who complete objectives for clinical study data), I worked on experimenting with cards for home screen notifications and recently visited section. Also, I redesigned the task/objective system for data analysts to receive and keep track of objectives.
Impact
Shifted the product to have a central objectives hub, where data analysts can organize their tasks, discover new ones, and complete tasks.
The Problem
Data analysts are needed to perform weekly and monthly objective tasks related to clinical study data cleaning and analyzing, but this information was stored in a small, side overlay, which made storing information cramped, made it difficult for data analysts to quickly understand what tasks they needed to complete, and how to complete them.
The Solution
Created a dedicated objectives list page with clear indication of the data analyst's current tasks and required weekly and monthly tasks. Added communication features on objectives to make hand-off to other analysts easier.
Designs
Wonderschool - 3 weeks
Forms & Documents
For Wonderschool's childcare management system, I worked on the Forms & Documents product, which would be a file manager for providers and parents to upload and download essential documents such as enrollment papers, medical forms, and parent handbooks. I implemented a version history system and special file type for the parent handbook creating over 10 iterations. Although another design was selected to be developed, I learned a lot about product sense and thinking about the user in this project.
Impact
Version history concept implemented in the final design, and gained high praise from client product manager on the designs.
The Problem
Parents and providers need a place to upload, download, and store documents. Wonderschool aims to set guidelines for providers so that they meet government regulations and can receive federal funding. Because of this, they require certain regulations on forms, and they need differentiation from other documents.
The Solution
I created a document storage system that incorporates a new file type which abides by regulations and implemented file versioning. The design was scalable so that file versioning could be incorporated into multiple files for potential future use.
Research
I researched file storage applications to gain insights on how they displayed detailed file information and incorporated file versioning. Since I was a user of most of these platforms, I was able to understand what features and information hierarchy I enjoyed the most. However, this back-fired on me in this stage since I was focused on what features I thought were helpful rather than what would be appropriate for the target audience.
Products Researched: Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive
Main Insights
From the research, I gathered that displaying graphics of data to show team progress helps communicate statistics in a non-complex manner.
Some features I thought were interesting and gave good insight to the status of the team was a bar chart of all the team member's assigned tasks and the percentage they finished with filtering abilities, task tracking through status of completion, and team member profiles that display progress statistics.
Designs
