UX/UI/Industrial Design
Phenom World / Thermo Fisher
Lead Designer & Project lead
Early impact
In early brainstorm sessions about the the product architecture we came up with a number of key recommendations that proved to be vital to the product success.
First we advised to use a combination of a motorized stage and a simple digital camera. This combination allowed the user to select and store a region of interest with the built-in digital and then revisit that same location with pin point accuracy with the high-magnification of the SEM.
Then we started challenging and reordering internal components until the system was significantly more compact than before.
Based on these starting points we started designing, engineering & prototyping. Along the way, this prototyping mindset yielded another innovation: A sample holder and door hinge construction that allowed samples to be loaded in seconds, rather than minutes.
After all this innovation on the physical side, the product deserved an innovative UI as well. We decided to go for a touch-screen-based solution (mind you, this was 2006) and a radically simplified UI. This allowed user to touch anywhere on the screen to quickly center the image and focus. This resulted in a patented, award-winning, first of its kind product and a completely new product category.
During later iterations (2012 - 2016) we were able to introduce new features such as full screen imaging, an improved image library, and sharing options. These improvements were a result of talks with clients as well as multiple rounds of interactive prototyping. We found that prototyping was a much more efficient way to refine our solutions than discussing static mock-ups. By putting the prototypes into the hands of users, we could gather feedback on what they valued and what they didn't, allowing us to make necessary improvements.
Role of prototyping
Interactive prototyping has been a key skill for me for over 10 years. During that time my tools changed, from Axure to Proto.io and via Pixate to Form before finally settling on my current tools, Protopie for high-fidelity and Figma for low-to-medium fidelity.
What has not changed is the need to make clever choices regarding what to validate, at what project stage, with which fidelity level and for what audience. Research budget is a finite resource and I am a firm believer in spending it where it matters most: small-scale repetitive testing in the early stages of a project.