Implementation of a Research Tracker

Company

Roche

Project Name

Research Tracker for Validation

UX Research

Roche

A Swiss multinational healthcare company that operates worldwide under two divisions: Pharmaceuticals and Diagnostics. I worked for Roche Diagnostics, which manufactures diagnostic equipment and reagents for research and medical diagnostic applications. My department chapter was Customer Experience & Solution Design (CXSD).

The Context

As the Researcher on a UX team with one UX/UI Designer and UX Lead, I spearheaded research initiatives to simplify data-heavy, complex interfaces for blood sample analysis software used in laboratories globally. Our primary focus was on Quality Control and Instrument Maintenance products. Given the high-risk nature of these solutions, we followed strict design processes to ensure the delivery of high-quality, reliable outcomes.

In this role, I successfully:

developed research templates for scheduling, recruitment, data analysis, and cross-team communication, which were adopted across the CXSD department
collaborated with PMs, BPMs, stakeholders, and developers to ensure actionable research outcomes and created reference materials for the teams
managed research schedules based on business, UX goals, and resource availability, overseeing global participant recruitment and communication
led Miro workshops to facilitate analysis and alignment across teams
presented high-quality reports detailing usability concerns, design validations, and suggestions for next step improvements

During my time at Roche, I focused on the reformation of the research processes and communications with other teams on the product. This required thorough analysis of current templates and tools to determine what was still relevant, what needed to be adjusted or adapted, and where we had gaps that needed solutions.

One of the gaps we had was a clear form of communication between the UX team, PMs, BPMs, and dev teams when validating our products through research. This led to my creation of a Research Tracker sheet, a new tool designed specifically to serve our needs, that we could use to ensure that all members were kept up-to-date on decisions and changes in feature statuses.

The Need

Because of the high-risk status of our Quality Control and Instrument Maintenance solutions, it could take on average two months to go through stages required for research procedures, from starting the initiative to delivering the design change suggestions for approval. At the end of these initiatives, information can be forgotten and cause some teams to be on different pages in terms of how to continue with next steps.

With the design of this template, I wanted to achieve three main goals:

Present an easy tracking method to provide a clear, final Yes/No validation response to questions.
Deliver simple, straightforward answers to various roles in the product team.
Support the value of research by showing it as a direct connection between initial questions and design releases.

What I came up with in the end was a tracker based on three phases of the research process, then categorized by the different elements involved in each step.

*To maintain confidentiality, certain parts of the images have been blurred.

Research Tracker Template Breakdown

The Impact

The tracker was well received by all teams working on our products. It aided us in keeping clear communication and kept everyone up-to-date. After its successful implementation, I shared this template (along with others I had created) with the other UX Researchers in CXSD so it could be available for use throughout the department chapter. I was also asked by the Head of Product to present it to their department, so other product teams could begin adapting and incorporating it to fit their needs.

After testing its use a few times, I noticed there were moments during our Continuous Discovery phases that were not covered in the template, so I created a second tab for a Research Backlog specifically for that purpose. This also helped us see related topics we wanted to explore further, even though they were not part of the current scope.