Every year, the Bio-IT World conference organizers invite companies to showcase best practices. The Pistoia Alliance includes our User Experience for the Life Sciences (UXLS) project which is dedicated to increasing the presence of User Experience (UX ) in Life Science industry. This year, our UXLS toolkit was selected as a finalist in the competition for the 2018 Bio-IT World Best Practices Award! Dedicated members of the User Experience for the Life Sciences (UXLS) project team emphasised the importance of keeping UX at the forefront of software design, working across boundaries, the true value of return on investment, and our newly released UXLS Toolkit.
The UXLS Toolkit is designed to benefit the R&D life science community. Workflows within a scientific laboratory and in silico analytics environment are more complex than a universal experience like checking email or taking a photo thus, UX is especially crucial in the life sciences. Our project team of over 50 UX specialists across 20 different life science organizations, has built the UXLS Toolkit specifically for life science professionals to exchange best practices, case studies, and ultimately improve the quality of scientific software tool development.
In communicating best practices, the UXLS Toolkit aims to engage professionals to understand the benefits of better UX design. In many cases, badly designed software tools cost precious R&D time on training, result in frustrated users, and increase the likelihood of critical errors. UX drives efficiency across both IT and the science teams they support. Software tools that serve the real needs of scientists enable companies to move faster through the drug discovery process.
Digital solutions and other best practices will be discussed at the User Experience for Life Sciences Conference being held on the 15th of May 2018 in Boston, Massachusetts at the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research. The conference will feature keynote speakers from world-renowned Life Science companies and hands-on workshops to promote a better understanding of UX in practice.