Keeping an eye on the art of drug design.
Challenge
Being a provider of computational drug design software to major pharmaceutical companies, Schrödinger wanted its customers to have an exceptional user experience with a new software product. The new application needed to address these issues:- Get users to concentrate on drug discovery, not the (Motif) user interface.
- Get the software to work in synch with user workflow and expectations.
- Offer a way for users to intuitively understand how to access the application's powerful features.
- Give users a way to rely on the product's ease of use that other drug designers can be trained with it.
- Let the user interface allow for discover of a process now being automated, normally done manually for scientific reasons.
Approach
Benefits
Schrödinger's products are scrutinized for scientific integrity and are used to speed up the 5-10 year life-cyle of typical drug discovery, therefore the software is a serious purchase for pharmaceuticals and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Given these factors, the software's product manager was nervous that asking users to test software with issues might reflect poorly on the brand and customer relationship.
Schrödinger had one advantage: they had conducted usability testing in the past and knew the power of gaining direct user feedback and validation. Schrödinger knew they had to go out to customers and spend an entire week listening, observing and understanding how the application could improve the customer experience and successful adoption of the new product. Schrödinger turned to Experience Dynamics for help.
To conduct the usability testing in the most non-intrusive manner, Experience Dynamics took our portable usability lab to four large pharmaceutical companies and asked target users to perform real world drug design tasks. Not only were users cooperative, they were delighted that their software vendor was including them in the usability testing process. Giving users a voice in the software enhancement process actually strengthened Schrödinger's relationships with customers. One of Schrödinger's clients told them he wished other vendors would usability test their products.
Schrödinger had a unique understanding of the customer group since the company was founded and run by PhD's in Advanced Chemistry. So when they said they knew their customers, they did. But there was more to discover from the customer site visits.
"Although we had a general idea of what our customers wanted, the usability study that Experience Dynamics conducted revealed things that most certainly would have gone unnoticed. Having the chance to go out to customer sites and watch them use our software was invaluable. We saw exactly what problems users had with features and functionality and what needed to be changed to make a better software product". - Ramy Farid, Ph.D. Vice President, Scientific Development and Program Management, Schrödinger, LLC
Through careful interpretation of the cognitive behavior of Schrödinger's users, Experience Dynamics were able to determine stumbling points, strategic design enhancements and overall reactions to the proposed user interface.
Experience Dynamics and Schrödinger attended all sessions, offering detailed insight and context surrounding new design changes Experience Dynamics later proposed as part of the reporting process.
- Our usability testing solution identified twenty strategic enhancements in ease of use to the design, from icons to menus, screen behaviors and changes to key features.
- Users scored an average success rate of 84% allowing the development team to focus on the areas of the design that were most confusing and re-work functionality that under-performed.
- In addition to the actionable design recommendations in our Usability Test Report, Schrödinger gained insight into subjective satisfaction needs that many competitors had left unaddressed.
- Beyond their normal Quality Assurance and beta testing process, Schrödinger expects to strengthen customer satisfaction and loyalty with the new enhancements that will go directly to customers who matter most.
- 1 yr. after release the product response has been extremely positive. Sales risk was diminished greatly: the product was well received by customers and has sold multiple millions of dollars.
About Schrödinger
Schrödinger is a drug discovery technology development company based in Portland, OR and New York, NY. The company is dedicated to the development of innovative computational technologies as well as providing superior solutions and services for the design, selection, and optimization of novel drug candidates. Schrödinger's initial product, Jaguar, provides solutions to the Schrödinger equation, the fundamental equation describing molecular structure and energetics. Jaguar has a 5-10X performance advantage over its competitors, and at present is used in nearly all major US pharmaceutical companies.
Learn more about the usability testing Schrödinger procured.
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