Design a pilot experience to make the supply chain more transparent by digitizing their existing workflow using Blockchain Technology
[PFIZER GCS]
Overview
Clinical Researchers used paper-based forms to track their Intellectual Property (e.g. Drugs, Vials, Solutions). The manual process resulted in a widely known supply chain problem of one-up-one-down. Furthermore, the process added to the complexity as multiple versions of truth are created by different members of the supply chain.
Responsibilities
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Design Leadership – Leading the User Experience across all features of the solution
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Planning & Communication – Develop a plan of action for UX deliverables by collaborating with the Visual Design and Engineering team.
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Delivery Management – Develop wireframes, communicate design direction and get sign-off on wireframes.
Overview
Year
2020
Industry
Pharmacy and Blockchain
Phase
Delivery
Role
Lead UX Designer
Target audience
Members of the Pfizer clinical supply chain using manual paper forms to track life saving drugs in the Northern America region.
Goal
My goal was to create an experience that shows the most relevant information required to take action and make a decision, keeping in mind the constraints of the blockchain technology.
Approach
Start the project with a discovery phase to understand supply chain process, followed by problem definition and value delivery concepts.
Estimating timelines
The approach focused on understanding the supply chain context. The 'discovery' and 'define' stages were outlined based on the secondary research provided in the format of documents and presentations (as primary research was not part of the contract).
Fig. 1: Money movement diagrams to differentiate physical and virtual account structure
Planning Milestones
The team members got together to discuss their checkpoints and dependencies before the project started. Given the short scale of the project, the estimations and tracking were done using Excel.
In hindsight, this could have been tracked better on more automated platforms such as JIRA.
Fig. 1: Money movement diagrams to differentiate physical and virtual account structure
Understanding business
We created journeys and process diagrams that helped us understand the role of various members in the supply chain. For the purpose of this release, we focused on 6 types of members in the process
Fig. 1: Diagram of the supply chain process
Understanding people
Documenting people’s goals and tasks helped us understand their role in the supply chain process. The information was received second-hand by client stakeholders in the format of word documents and presentations.
Fig. 4: Documentation of different roles in the supply chain process. Illustration Credit: Freepik.com
Prioritising focus areas
I collaborated with business analysts to understand the most important focus areas based on the Scope of Work (SOW) signed with the client.
We used the MoSCoW technique to prioritize the use-cases. The exercise was done on Miro to make use of its collaborative nature.
Information architecture
The IA helped us organize the information into relevant clusters. These clusters were later to understand the overall navigation. We used miro to create the information architecture as it's easy to create branches and search specific information
Personalised filters
While providing status for each activity was very helpful it created an issue of providing participants with too much information. To resolve this issue we identified the core statuses for each participant and applied them by default. Participants still had the option of setting their own default.
Prototype showcase
The prototype was created in Adobe XD allowing us to create videos that can be to clients for approvals.
Visual explorations
Below are some visual explorations created after the completion of the project. The focus for visual design was on exploration and building on my skillset as an experience designer. The activity sensitized me to the constraints a visual designer faces while building production-level designs.
Fig. 8: Explorations to show a summary of account hierarchy
Learning #1
Designing for Blockchain
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Once you add something to the Blockchain you cannot remove it.
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Blockchain technology does not allow the altering of information once it is added to the chain
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It's quite simple to backtrack information
Learning #2
Understanding trade-offs
Understanding the MVP is a priority from a business perspective, it’s important to weigh the importance of which features add more value during the product development process.
Learning #3
Collaboration is key
Understanding the technology on which the product is developed can drastically impact the experience. For example, “A good experience should be forgiving” however, in this case, participants can’t edit the information once it’s on the blockchain ledger, hence, we had to think of alternatives to design around it.
All the participants were able to use the product with minimal training. They were able to seamlessly handover the IP from one member to another.
[POST RELEASE]