ndibe.com ~ Case Study for Amphora Research

Amphora Research PatentSafe ~ Case Study

This case study shows examples of Information Architecture deliverables that were produced for Amphora Research while redesigning the user Interface for their PatentSafe product. The PatentSafe software solution is a replacement for the traditional laboratory notebook. Historically scientists have recorded their experiments in bound laboratory notebooks. Notebooks are often vital pieces of evidence in patent infringement or interference cases. They are used to prove the date of discovery of an invention. Electronic records are not yet widely accepted as permissable replacements for bound lab notebooks. PatentSafe provides a way for scientists to record their electronic data on to security paper for legal, loose-leaf paper laboratory notebooks. This removes the need for scientists to "Cut and Stick" their printed data, using real scissors and sticky tape into their traditional bound laboratory notebooks.

Competitive Analysis

Electronic Laboratory Notebooks, ELNs are generally developed by organic chemistry software vendors who have branched out from specialist applications such as chemical databases. Often the venders claim to have solved the electronic records issue, by collaborating with firms that offer a tamperproof electronic data integrity solution.
Laboratory Information Management Software, LIMS are information management systems designed specifically for laboratories. LIMS' organise and sort data from analytical laboratory instruments into various report formats.
Traditional Bound Laboratory Notebooks are still widely used in the industry. Smaller companies simply do not have the funding for complex and expensive electronic laboratory notebooks and scientists are resistant to the associated changes in their working practices.

Amphora market PatentSafe as being a complementary product to any ELN or LIMS. Amphora target very small startup companies who require a very low cost entry point and could not entertain a large ELN solution. However, the customer can choose to use any combination of office application, specialist in-house or commercial software and print the output into PatentSafe for signing and archiving.

Audience Definition

I began with a quick study of the Life Sciences industry and the importance of patents in protecting intellectual property. Life Sciences, and in particular, Bio Technology is a fast growing, volalite, industry, illustrated by the number of tiny startups that come and go. Within the industry, patent litigation is a cut-throat business where companies can literally be made or lost on the success of a single court case.

"Biotechs are like soap bubbles, either they merge or they pop."

The user personas were developed by a series of discussions with Amphora and supplemented by interviews with scientists from one of their key customers. The personas capture the different types of PatentSafe users, their backgrounds and their needs. The personas were used to discuss journeys though PatentSafe which proved beneficial when designing the user interface structure and navigation through the interface. In particular, most users perceive PatentSafe to be a very lightweight, software printer for printing on loose-leaf, legal paper. Their journeys needed to be kept simple, so not to put off these users by seemingly unnecessary complexity.

Landscape Analysis

In many ways, PatentSafe is in a league of its own. It is the only electronic solution dedicated to the creation and preservation of records to be used in patent defence. It faces stiff competition from electronic laboratory notebook vendors. Amphora lecture at seminars and tradeshows to educate the market about the need for dedicated software to preserve Intellectual Property. As part of the review, I evaluated a number of web sites of Amphora's competitors.

Usability Issues

The next step was a heuristic review of PatentSafe, which uncovered the following opportunities for improvement:

Look and feel issues - colour palette, button positioning, haphazard, inconsistent layouts, wide tables, inappropriate use of white space
Site structure - poor task flow, poor categorisation in the menus, low-level tasks given too greater priority
Navigational problems - viewing a document very modal, no browse mode, hard to identify documents by document ID and summary line alone
Administration Console - poorly presented administration functionality, with minimal explanation
Inline help and comments - Minimal inline commentary, limited online help, limited action confirmation for destructive actions or finished actions
Inconsistant Vocabulary - variations between menus and page titles, different names used for the same components

High Level User Interface Goals

A facelift to give an intuitive, polished and professional finish
Improved branding to convey image of an established and trustworthy product
Scaling to support 100s of users
Overhaul the usability of the site
Internationalisation ready
Integration of new features such as the filing cabinet and scanning
Simplification of setup and administration
Upgrade of the online help

Product Goals

As Amphora were in the process of enhancing PatentSafe, the task was not simply to enhance the existing user interface.

We arranged a number of whiteboard sessions to discuss the strategic direction of the company and the product and how far we wanted initially to push the interface enhancements.

This cummulated in a fantastic interface for all to use.

Wire Frames

Using initial wireframes, we evaluated a number of different approaches for orienting the interface to make it task-centric, or document-centric or organiser-centric, etc. We decided that the organiser-centric layout best fitted with the user scenarios and interaction diagrams.

Using this layout, I added the key component groups that we had identitied earier, such as: task-based main navigation; a separate navigation bar for product and company information; and a large document thumbnails to aid browsing. Then finally using the look-and-feel that we had established in the branding exercise, I put together some initial pixel-perfect wireframes.

Grouping and Structure

The heuristic review of PatentSafe helped me with the task of organising the content into logical groups. First, I split the product and company information from the main functionality of the product, then I grouped the other contents into the key tasks of creating experiments, signing, tracking and reading experiments, and producing reports for managers and administration. This was instrumental in reducing the number of screen hops required for each user task. The taxonomy proved useful for creating consistant vocabulary and metaphors thoughout the interface and the site map was useful for tracking development.

Interaction Diagrams were used very successfully for work flow evaluation and helped us identify what functionality was required and the various stages of the application. This allowed us to greatly simplify the user interface layout. We discussed the use of metaphors for representing the different stages that an experiment travels through in patent safe and how to represent these concepts in the imagery and language of the user interface.

Branding

As a parallel activity, I analysed the look and feel of brands (such as large banks, building societies and city instituations) that had the image that Amphora wanted PatentSafe to convey - that of trust, reliability and subdued tastefulness. I mocked up a few examples using the key components of the selected brands - a subdued colour palette and a sparse, clean cut layout. We generated the PatentSafe palette from the colours of the companies logo and took forward the favoured look into drawing up the wireframes.

Additional Benefits

The following additional benefits were incurred:

An About page with improved marketing and support information
Improved opportunities for customer customisation and a training opportunity for Amphora.
Easier to browse and identify documents
Clearer distinction between viewing a document and reading a document to sign
Clear separation of pluggable features and features accessible by role only

Implementation

Implementation is ongoing at the moment. Functionality is iteratively appearing in PatentSafe for different customer releases. Customers are already getting to experience the interface and benefit from the improvements.