Informatics
As part of the new Pistoia Alliance collaborative project into UX for Life Sciences4 (UXLS), we col- lated data on the internal UX capabilities of nine global research-based companies5. All nine are rep- resented in the top 15 biopharmaceutical compa- nies by revenue in 20166.
Minding the ‘UX gap’ in life science R&D
“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” Dr Ralf Speth, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover7
A 2015 business research report8 highlighted that big firms are keen to broadcast their commitment to UX, for example by announcing:
l Their UX spend (see an IBM report in 20149). l UX recruitment drives, such as GE, 201410. l Acquisitions of UX agencies, such as Capital One which acquired Adaptive Path11 and BBVA who acquired Spring Studio12.
Surprisingly, many of the businesses actively investing in UX (or buying UX firms outright) are not those in creative industries, but instead include financial service companies such as Capital One and Square13; technology firms such as Adobe and Salesforce14 (CRM software); and management consultancies such as Accenture15. Even the complex field of rocket science is embracing UX design16. Life-science businesses may, however, be missing out on this upward trend. Our research shows that the maturity and size of UX capability within biopharmaceutical R&D organisations is hugely varied, from no UX function at all within R&D to one company deploying 25 FTEs in teams at four sites across three continents (Figure 1). There are no reported examples of acquisition of UX agencies in R&D- based life science companies yet. According to 2015 research17, the ideal ratio of UX designers to software developers is minimum 1:12, and ideally 1:4, but this is taking a simpler picture than for biopharmaceutical R&D. A more sensible (realistic) ratio may be two or three per 100 R&D headcount, or a flexible ratio which divides UX capability by project or department. A further recommendation would be to always con- sider having dedicated UX support when third- party software is to be reviewed for purchase for R&D.
Eight of the nine biopharmaceutical companies we asked also use external agencies for UX ser- vices. They are hired particularly for usability eval-
Drug Discovery World Summer 2017
uations, so this may be another way to improve the UX ratio at times of peak demand.
How life science R&D organisations structure UX functions internally Even at the ideal ratio, a ‘UX headcount’ alone will not make life science R&D automatically realise the benefits of UX design18. There are three basic options for structuring UX capabilities effectively:
1. Have a dedicated design team (‘design studio’) internally.
2. Have designers distributed throughout the organisation, effectively embedding design deep into your operation.
3. A combination of 1 and 2.
A hybrid approach of ‘design studio’ and dis- persed designers is best. If designers are embed- ded, then ‘design thinking’ lies at the core of one’s company and good design will influence all the decisions that are made. Adding a dedicated design team will create an aspirational place for designers and, importantly, help to attract talented designers.
“Big companies can be stifling for the creative set, but
...GE’s design team operates almost like a start-up inside of GE.”19 And at NASA they have “essentially a design consultancy inside... that builds user-centred software for various teams across the agency12.”
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Figure 1 Summary of the current UX capability of nine large biopharmaceutical companies. Company C, for example, has a UX team of 25 people and total headcount of 70,000 (ratio = 0.000357). Company H has no dedicated UX function in R&D; UX effort is only applied to external consumer-facing products. Company I has UX embedded only in development teams that elected to switch to UX methodologies, no central mandate for UX exists
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