I. PROJECT OVERVIEW
Client/ Brand
Global Pharmaceutical Oncology/ Relapsed Follicular Lymphoma Brand
Teams
UX team – Director of UX (that was me!) and Junior UX Designer
Creative Director, Copywriter, Account Manager, Project Manager, Developer
Problem Statement, Client Goal and Objective
The client wanted to create a patient site that addresses relapsed follicular lymphoma and the patient's’ most important needs while highlighting key areas that provide a positive experience with the brand. The client wanted the website to provide instructional and inspirational content to the patients.
The goal was to ensure a positive experience for these patients by offering them support and giving them a centralized place to seek information or contact information about potential issues.
Platform
Website operating in the client’s TeamSite environment and utilizing PHP, MySQL, and LDAP.
II. DISCOVERY (DEFINING THE PROBLEM)
A. Understand the Problem
Who are the main users of the product?
1) Primary users are patients who are prescribed and considering the drug therapy in the US for follicular lymphoma
• Patients are in third-line or higher, so they are familiar with the disease state.
• They have experienced multiple relapses at this point and are often frustrated in need hope.
• Follicular lymphoma is a rare disease, so this is a very targeted population.
• Only about 5,500 patients are 3L+.
2) Secondary users are caregivers
How does the client solve the problem right now?
The client has an HCP site and uses brochures to market the drug therapy to patients.
Where is the product being used?
Oncology clinics and hospitals across America in all 50 States.
How will the product be used?
The patients will use the website as a centralized place to get more information about the drug therapy and/or to contact the brand about potential issues.
B. Understand the Users
To understand the user needs and goals, we did a whiteboard session with our internal agency’s stakeholders. Our goal was to have 3-5 user personas by listing the potential users for site. The first exercise was an empathy map. We discovered the following:
• Patient 1 and 5 were not our target audience.
• Patient 2 and 4 were very similar.
• The agency’s stakeholders did not know enough about the patients because the client never did market research.
Assumptions
• Patients will be lead to the site by Oncologists, oncology centers, or brand’s digital strategy.
• Patients are in third-line or higher, so they are familiar with the disease state.
• Patients have access to a desktop computer or mobile device.
Constraints
• Client requested we format content based on brochure.
• Client will host on their TeamSite servers and manage analytics
C. Understand the Competitors
We did a thorough competitive analysis of the top follicular lymphoma therapy patient websites to understand where the gaps and most used features are.
III. SOLUTIONS
A. IA
The UX team needed to restructure the content in a way that made sense online. The brochure content supplied by client’s Agency of Record (AOR) wasn’t structured in a website friendly way. We initiated a content strategy workshop with the content strategist. The copywriter was then able to write a manuscript based on this agreed outline.
B. Sitemap
After internal review and agreement, we presented a digitized sitemap.
C. Wireframes
Using OmniGraffle, we created annotated wires. These wires went through several rounds of revisions. The following is an example of the homepage desktop and mobile views.
IV. TAKEAWAYS
There were some major challenges.
1. We had to present arguments for a revised website content strategy. The client initially expected to see a website version of the brochure. We spent much time explaining to the client the need for interaction and patient centered information architecture.
2. The executives of my agency were not supportive of doing content strategy workshops with the UX team. The UX team had to prove the workshop’s effectiveness in order to get a future buy-in for this definition phase.
3. The agency’s stakeholders did not know enough about the patients because the client never did market research. It was a challenge to customize an experience without market or user research. The turnaround time was tight; thus, not allowing the UX team to conduct its own user research.
3. The agency’s stakeholders did not know enough about the patients because the client never did market research. It was a challenge to customize an experience without market or user research. The turnaround time was tight; thus, not allowing the UX team to conduct its own user research.
4. The client doesn’t allow external agencies to do analytics reporting on its properties. Because of this, we found it difficult to design based on metrics or user behaviors.
Outcomes –
The stakeholders of the client were indecisive on which features to spend money on. In the end, they decided that developing a patient website for this niche market wasn’t affordable.