Product UX cahoots - bending the experience of remote agile UX practice

About this Case Study

In the real world, designing great experiences is often constrained by tight budgets and resources, aspirational timeframes or insufficient staffing.

Successfully implementing transformational design changes under these conditions is challenging, to say the least. Doing so within an agile start-up environment, with a remote, part-time UX resource seems daring at best, but this was our journey.

We will share how we re-imagined and re-developed Labguru - an electronic lab notebook and inventory management tool - to more effectively cater to individual researchers and academic labs as well as industry customers in the life sciences (including big pharma companies).

We will present the case study a bit like a dialogue between user experience and product management - sharing our story and inviting participants to share theirs.

Throughout the case study we want to expose participants to both sides of the story - the UX side and the PM side. In doing so, we hope to raise awareness of some of the unique challenges each roles brings, while also providing tips for improving UX and PM processes as well as the interplay between them.

This case study is about crafting a real-world UX process within the given constraints of an agile start-up and a complex existing product. It's not about a front-heavy project with big budgets or presenting a perfect process.

The session will benefit anyone working in UX, from early-career to experienced, who is looking for guidance and practical advice on how to make UX work in the real world. We will share our experience working on UX projects when the idealised UX process just doesn’t cut it or isn’t defendable in an under-resourced project or start-up. We will demonstrate how we practice UX methods to re-design an established, complex product in an agile environment.

We'll also explain how we made our remote agile UX process work in a start-up environment.

Join us if you want empowerment to tackle remote UX work, to improve your agile UX practice or are looking for some insights into how to connect the dots within your current UX process.

About the Speakers

Sven Laqua

Sven Laqua is Head of User Experience at Digital Science, a technology company serving the needs of scientific and research communities at key points along the full cycle of research.

His current work focuses on helping start-ups with everything UX - from finding product-market fit over making agile practices more human-centred to creating and advocating UX excellence initiatives at the board level.

In his previous life in academia, Sven worked as a research associate and teaching fellow in interaction design at University College London. For the last 15 years, he has designed prototypes, conducted lab-based and in the field research across academia and industry, working with start-ups and big corporates, co-located and remote, and presented at mayor academic human-computer interaction conferences around the globe.

 ux4science

Revital Kristal

Revital Kristal is Product Team Lead at Biodata, a technology company serving the needs of life science laboratory managers and researchers. Labguru, the flagship product of Biodata, is an electronic lab notebook (ELN) and inventory management solution that lets researchers manage all their research activities in one place.

In her work, Revital is responsible for all aspects of product development: product strategy, innovation, roadmap, product definition, specification, UX, content and QA.

Revital’s enthusiasm to find creative solutions for different needs and problems has helped her to successfully manage and lead different projects across different disciplines over the past 12 years. She is experienced in working in agile and scrum, managing international projects and analysing complex data, while keeping innovation and user experience her top priorities.