Cybershuttle
Healthcare UX: Enhancing the efficiency of biophysicists’ research work by streamlining interactions between their devices and touch points.
Healthcare
B2C
Professional Project
Background
The research work of biophysicists requires them to juggle between two devices - their personal computer and supercomputers. This back and forth between the two devices decreases their efficiency and increases the time to do research.
My Contribution
In a team of 2 UX Designers, I synthesized research notes, studied the scientific workflow of biophysicists, and worked as a UI designer to design the Cybershuttle.
Who are Biophysicists?
Biophysicists are scientists who study how living things like humans, animals, and plants function. Their research helps us develop new medicines to fight diseases.
Problem
However, their job is tough. They have to deal with complex technology, manage their projects and teams, and frequently switch between devices like computers and remote supercomputers, which slows down their work.
What is a supercomputer?
A supercomputer is a powerful computer that processes large amounts of information quickly for tasks like weather prediction and scientific research.
Solution
Cybershuttle. A platform that helps manage projects and teams, and connects personal computers and remote supercomputers for improved device interactions to speed up scientists’ research.
P.S. Supercomputers are referred to as High-performance Computing (HPC) units.
What and where was the problem exactly?
Experiment preparation, execution, or analysis?
To uncover the core problems and needs of biophysicists, we spoke with biophysicists and studied their current workflow of conducting experiments from start to finish.
Studying the current workflow of biophysicists helped us outline the main friction points in the biophysicists' research workflow.
There is an absence of a system in place for tracking projects and managing teams.
Research workflow is less efficient due to the manual transfer of files to and from supercomputers.
Supercomputers are not being utilized in an efficient way.
Opportunity Space
So the question arises, how might we help biophysicists so that they can improve their team management and optimize their research work?
To address this challenge, we identified key features for the Cybershuttle and developed a streamlined Information Architecture (IA) to ensure seamless navigation across its complex dashboard.
Provision to seamlessly connect with remote supercomputers, exchange files and view results.
Project and Team management dashboards for efficient management of human resource and track progress.
Job monitor dashboard to keep a track of in-progress, successful and failed experiments.
A detailed view of supercomputer utilization and available resources.
Final Designs
Let's explore how Cybershuttle optimizes the research experience for biophysicists.
After logging in, the biophysicist can get a detailed view of projects, their statuses, and team members for effective management.
The job monitor gives exhaustive information on individual experiments inside a project, and the files associated with the experiment.
To send files to the remote supercomputer, the biophysicist can easily do this through their own workstation by connecting to their HPC account.
The next step is to enter their HPC account credentials and give their project ID.
The next step is to choose the remote supercomputer as per their preference, according to their computing needs.
The biophysicists can also look at the supercomputer utilization among the team members and manage the allocation to each team member.
Learnings
Grasping and understanding scientific domain knowledge was a bit challenging at first.
The project required displaying a large amount of information, necessitating a seamless user experience.
Designing a site map established an effective navigation flow for the Cybershuttle platform.