Objective

One core goal of the Oracle Cancer Research Cloud (OCRC) initiative is to create a major inflection point in medical research, diagnosis, and treatment. This inflection point will not be based on a single scientific discovery, but rather on the ability of the medical and scientific communities to integrate and share large complex datasets of clinical and biological knowledge. These datasets include models of molecular mechanisms of action and biological processes, multi-omic patient profiles, longitudinal patient data, and patient outcomes.


Alan Nugent, SVP Cloud Initiative Oracle, delivering an overview & benefits of the Oracle Cancer Research Cloud#oracleic17 @RizkManagement pic.twitter.com/UuKi48jbRv

— OracleHealthSciences (@OracleHealthSci) March 22, 2017


My Role

My approach as a Principal UX/UI lead on this project was also a Product Thinker, following Nikkel Blaase, who said "…Life is to short to build something nobody wants…" My role extended beyond "traditional" UI/UX designer responsibilities performing extensive research of users need, designing and building UX/UI, and also involved exploration, assessment of potential, open source solutions (capabilities) to meet users needs and integrate them into the platform. One example was a Benchling, an electronic Lab Note Book, a cloud solution for molecular biologists. I carried "there is no task beneath me" attitude, and in addition to the above duties, I designed and developed Oracle Cancer Cloud product website, worked on data visualization and animation for biological pathways, designed curation tool and made things happen to ensure that MVP reached users on time and on budget.

Challenges

Lack of understanding User Experience role in the newly created team ("Can UX develop production ready code?"), so evangelizing and educating team members wasn't an option. Very complex domain had to be studies be able to conduct user research and understand lingo of participants and internal team of scientists. One major UX challenge was how to build a product that meets needs of variety of personas with a large degree of divergence, while ensuring consistent user experience and keep it simple and usable.


Solutions

Oracle Cancer Research Cloud

Example of persona: Genomic Scientist - Bioinformatician

Customer Journey

Future state of Cancer Researcher Journey in the era of precision, value-based medicine

Oracle Home Page

Home and Login Pages (Wireframes)

Prep work

Brainstorming on data structure

Cohort Screen Flow

User task flow to conduct cohort examination

Pathway curation solution

Our scientist emailed me this photo and asked for help to automate pathway curation process

Curation Help

Scientists had to print out and glue together multiple Excel spreadsheets to follow sequence of steps in the pathway curation process

Brainstorming

We started whiteboarding potential solution for automating curation

Curation Tool

Reactome pathway curation wireframe and data visualization. Curated pathway was animated to demonstrate sequence of steps.

Platform External Webstie

I designed and coded Oracle Cancer Research Cloud website

Product Website

User task flow to conduct cohort examination