Product design for international pharma

Bayer AG is a German chemical and pharmaceutical multinational with core competencies in health and food science. Spanning over 150 years of history, the company develops new molecules for use in products and groundbreaking solutions to enhance the health of people, animals and plants.

Bayer was keen to change its digital product creation culture by reshaping its design operations to leverage the value of an outstanding UX on its platforms. To do this, we start with a pilot project focused on one of Bayer's main challenges: the relationship with healthcare professionals. Our design team, composed of Product Designers, UX/UI Designers, a Product Owner, and a Strategic Designer, take on the challenge of transforming the work model by creating prototypes based on evidence and with a 100% User-Centric approach.

The timeframe we worked with was just 6 sprints and the main challenges we had to tackle were:

1. The need to transform Bayer's technological product development from a model focused on the product and technology to a more user-centered model. This change in focus would lay the foundation for systematizing the product design process based on user needs.

2. Incorporating the customer's voice into the design process through Continuous Discovery.

3. Working with a multidisciplinary team with different languages, cultures, and work methodologies. This is enriching in many aspects, but it also requires a greater effort in adaptation and communication.

Transforming the customer experience requires a committed team and a customer-centric approach.

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Once we defined the objectives to achieve, we got to work and identified 5 lines of work, 5 User Journeys that we developed from start to finish, and organized them following the Agile methodology to provide the highest value delivery to the customer.

We defined and documented an initial version of the journey for each type of service or content that Bayer AG wanted to implement on the platform.

In less than two weeks, we started user interviews and tests with healthcare professionals with a Lean UX mindset, aiming to validate hypotheses as quickly as possible. This way, we could gather their feedback to either validate hypotheses or iterate on what wasn't working.

After six busy weeks we met our targets and exceeded the customer’s expectations with continuous value delivery through:

• Creation of a functional prototype.
• Validation of all key flows.
• Development of a new UI design language.
• Information architecture and UX validated for the Buyer Persona and the Pharma sector.
• We established the foundation for the Design System by componentizing key elements.

Applying the collected feedback and with a Continuous Discovery mindset, we iterated on the prototype, incorporating the customer's voice, and working on the visual and interaction design of the different services and content categories for further testing.

One of the most complex exercises we faced was information architecture due to the complexity and quantity of services and content we had.

In addition to these milestones, we achieved something very important for Runroom: a genuine improvement in Bayer's working philosophy for future projects and the transmission of a culture that demonstrates the importance of considering the user and developing any technological solution and innovation from a customer-centric perspective, giving UX and UI the prominence they deserve. Due to this outcome, we are still working with Bayer AG today on consolidating the Design System globally for the entire ecosystem of websites created by the company. We will share more details soon. ?