What are the benefits of user experience design?

Within the life sciences, it is important to design and build solutions that empower users to answer their research questions.

Teams that utilise user experience design often see three key benefits:

1. They generate real-world data that informs design and development decisions, rather than just relying on opinions or copying what another team has already done
2. An overall improvement in measurable outcomes, including increased awareness, adoption, retention, and user satisfaction
3. A reduction in development, support, and maintenance costs

By taking a deeper view of how we design things, and by basing our choices on a sound understanding of how people work and what they are trying to achieve, we can work towards building scientific services and tools that provide real value to the community, and that don’t get in the way of research activities.

From learning about and understanding both users and project leaders, through to working on structure, content, and interaction design, and the iteratively adapting our design based on testing, user experience design can help have a holistic view of the things we work on.