Informatics
‘Competency
Centres’,
or
‘User
Centricity
Programmes’. These titles are more suited to the culture of the pharmaceutical industry. Seven of the nine companies we surveyed report-
ed their UX capability directly overlaps with busi- ness analysis. Supporting comments from leader- ship include: “We have 12 usability experts for ‘experience exchange’ throughout the organisa- tion”, and “We practise democratising UX via champions in user-facing groups, and actively sup- port projects with any UX involvement”. One company described having a specific role for “strategic integration of UX into R&D”.
Composition of UX teams in R&D IT Seven of the nine companies we asked have a cen- tralised UX team in R&D IT. Figure 3 illustrates the specific roles in these teams.
Figure 2 Number of years of
operational UX in R&D IT for the nine biopharmaceutical companies we investigated. Company A also had the highest UX FTE ratio (Figure
1) and is tied with Company G for longest-standing UX team. Company F has a smaller ratio, but a longer-standing team
Having an attractive environment is crucial,
because hiring skilled UX personnel may not be easy. According to a 2014 survey, ‘UX Designer’ and ‘Developer’ top the list of hard-to-fill roles, with more than 44% of digital-experience decision- makers saying they had difficulty recruiting them20. Our investigation showed some biopharmaceuti- cal companies may be doing a better job than oth- ers at demonstrating UX value internally. This is reflected in the size of the UX teams (Figure 1) and the number of years companies have been investing in UX capability (Figure 2). We also found that within R&D IT, in-house UX design ‘agencies’ may be referred to as ‘Centres of Excellence’,
Scientists turned UX Designers, or UX Designers turned scientists?
Few UX professionals have a scientific background (Figure 3). They are far more likely to have a back- ground in psychology, human-computer interaction (HCI), technology, cognitive science, human factors (engineering) or design education. University pro- grammes (eg UX, HCI) and professional member- ship bodies (eg the Usability Professionals Association21) now bolster the profession. A lack of scientific training allows UX designers to ask questions without restricted thought pat- terns (sometimes called ‘the curse of knowledge’). Designers do need enthusiasm for science, and
Figure 3
Composition of UX teams in R&D IT, based on information from the nine sample companies. In German- speaking countries, a ‘UX Designer’ is usually referred
to as a ‘UX Engineer’. Asterisk means the team includes a science domain expert UX designer
58
Drug Discovery World Summer 2017
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