Business Need

Ingenuity had an existing product that helped scientists analyze the results of gene testing and see patterns in the results. They asked Sliced Bread Design to help add new functionality that would allow scientists to compare results across multiple studies in a graphical and tabular manner and drill down into the results. The final design had to be complete within three weeks, resulting in a fast paced schedule with clever shortcuts for including users in the design process.

Strategy & Solution

In order to create a user friendly interface, we:

• Interviewed in-house scientists at Ingenuity to understand their goals and mental models
• Created a wizard and a simple project management system to help users upload their data, set it up for initial comparison, and create new comparisons over time
• Offered graphs designed along Tufte’s principles to let users view the data in a format that made sense for their needs
• Designed communicative, easy to scan information graphics in small multiples to help users get a quick overview of large amounts of data in order to spot anomalies
• Provided two tiers of filtering tools to help scientists highlight and focus on the data relevant to their goals
• Provided well-placed drill downs to help scientists understand the underlying processes in areas of interest and explore specific results
• Informed final information architecture by holding collaborative design session with scientists where we provided them with paper examples of all the different types of data they could access and asked them to create their ideal organization on a table