Synapse presented a challenge for the design team in Biomark. As this was our first platform that was being built from scratch. Thus, we set out to properly understand the goals and context of the project thoroughly in order to create a SAAS that will fulfill the needs of our users.

Behind the scenes, we also took additional efforts to set up a design system and style guide that could accommodate the user experience and feature set that was required of the project.

Creating a SAAS for a company that has many labs in 3 countries meant a challenge in scale and scope. As such we broke the goals down to 3 main criteria.

The 3 goals of this platform created a delicate trifecta of needs from different users. We quickly understood that working to achieve one goal would sometimes be at odds with the other two. The main challenge was building a system that had a high throughput (operational efficiency), but without losing accuracy or proper accountability to enable issue resolution.

Understanding the key stakeholders and their distinct goals was crucial in charting out suitable screens for each party. This way we could anticipate the key criteria that each party seek out in their work and ensure that all of the project goals had a stakeholder mapped to it. For example, the management would keep their eye out on overall throughput, while staff are predominantly occupied by fulfilling a high accuracy.

Reflection:

Synapse was a particularly rewarding project to work on, mainly due to the challenges and opportunities it presented.

The creation of a lab platform required flexibility above all else, as proper design research and techniques could only cover so much, and flexibility of design and the system was required so as to create a tool that is versatile and responsive enough to handle all the challenges that goes into the functioning of a lab.