I had worked with the Balance app for almost 5 years, but the base of the app had never been quite right. Although brilliantly written by an engineer, it wasn’t quite parallel with how customers saw their own products. To run their clinical trials correctly, most client needed a feature called “cohorts,” which would have added a layer under the whole thing. If we built it on top of the existing experience, I would lead to a "Frankenstein effect" of it existing of unmatched parts, leading to a fractured and confusing experience.
This led to a good time to dig deep into user research, in ways we had never done so for the app. Extensive interviewing, shadowing and even bodystorming, where the team took a physical activity of doing the job of supply workers at a clinical factory, using our app.
For me, my team was increased to two UX designers, one UX researcher and one UI designer under me. Together, we took the team through several co-creation workshops, where we defined the user journeys together using several different methods.
After that the team divided the tasks in oder to quickly prototype solutions and test it with users. We ended up going through 2 rounds of user testing, and implemented a massive effort of 50 engineers; twice the size of the Balance team before that moment.
Once finished, we ended up with a completely redesigned product than we had previously had, performing 1.7 points higher in user acceptance (on a scale of 3).The next quarter we obtained more contracts with clients than we had any annual year combined in the app's history.
For me, it was the client feedback we received that made me the most satisfied. As this is an Enterprise product, this app is what these people used for their daily work in their jobs. This means by making it better, we didn't just make their jobs easier. We made their lives easier.