“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs
I recently returned from a 5 day roadshow, where our team presented goBalto’s new study startup solution to a select group of “A-lister” Contract Research Organizations and Sponsors. When I opened the presentation with our user interface, the initial comment I received from all these folks, was on how simple our user interface was. Adjectives like “clean”, “super-easy” “slick” and even “cool” came out of their mouths. This was reassuring. Because they could have easily thought that our solution might have appeared “weak” and not all that useful.
You see. One of the key philosophies in our design is simplicity. And who doesn’t want simplicity in their lives? Well, if you looked at the existing software solutions out there, you would think CROs and Sponsors desired complexity. I think this goes to the heart of what is wrong with the vast majority of clinical software solutions in the market. Most of these solutions are built by “front-line” study manager types, who believe that due to their many years of industry experience running clinical trials, this would make them qualified to build a user friendly website. It is because of this thinking, we have no choice but to select from a bunch of mediocre and awful options. I know how impossibly naive this thought process is. Because, until recently, I was one of these folks. Allow me to explain.
The $1 Million Lesson
When I first started goBalto, I had come off a very successful IPO. My last startup, Celltrion, was listed for over One Billion US dollars, and after 7 years of grueling sweat put into building Celltrion, I thought I was the “bees knees”. I took my knowledge and naively believed I could leverage my “industry experience”, to build a successful website. I mean, c’mon, how difficult could it be? Well, I’ll tell you.
After spending $1million, I ended up building the largest online directory of life science service providers. It even won an award. However, I had not nailed down how to translate this success into a monetizable strategy. More importantly, it did not address a true customer pain point.
It was only after through extensive trial and error, educating myself through countless books/blogs, networking with numerous successful founders and spending so much money, did I truly begin to understand what was required. At this point, most companies would have gone belly up. Luckily, because of my past success, I still had the financial backing to take another stab at it and take these lessons learned to build a successful online presence.
Now, I know there are alot of folks who have built great sites for much less. Kudos to them. The reality is, I have YET to find a clinical professional, who has built a solution, worthy of much praise. And I’ve pretty much seen them all.
22 Tabs and Nothing On
The clinical software industry is stuck in this “if I build it – because I know what the customer wants – they will come” mode. Most online clinical software solutions, are built by study managers, who have had many years experience managing trials. I am arguing that industry experience alone is not enough to build a GREAT USER FRIENDLY tool.
Take for example one website (who will remain anonymous), which touts simplicity as the core value in their CTMS system. I watched their demo and noticed they had 22 tabs through which a user could navigate through. Now, if I had to guess, I bet the founders of this website thought that by designing a user interface with 22 tabs, they would give users a feature rich application. 22 tabs? Really? I think this exemplifies what’s wrong with the clinical software industry. There’s a term for it. “Feature creep”. Thinking that if I build enough bells and whistles (in this case tabs) on a website, this will translate into a useful solution. I don’t know about you, but having 22 tabs on the user interface isn’t what I would describe as simple. More like, the opposite. The interface looks like a glorified Excel worksheet, online.
In all fairness though, this site is probably more “friendly” than most of the enterprise solutions out there. But, if I wanted to use Excel, I would use Excel. It clearly has a LOOOOOONG way to go. We all deserve better than this. YOU deserve better than this.
What Consumer Websites Like Dropbox Can Teach the Clinical Software Industry
When I think about what I consider to be really effective websites, one quickly comes to mind – Dropbox, an online file sharing system. These guys operate in the consumer web-application space and focus on doing one feature right, which is file sharing. And most importantly, they focus on the customer. That’s right! They actually talk and iterate their website based on customer feedback. Now contrast this with the clinical software industry. Where the mantra is “build it” and the customer will come. This is where goBalto is different.
The Revolution Has Begun
Behind the scenes, we are building a revolutionary clinical study startup solution in partnership with leading CROs and sponsors, which will “knock your socks off”. We have an army of advisors, consultants and employees, who represent over 300 – that’s right, three hundred – collective years experience in clinical research. These folks are key opinion leaders and know their stuff. But, these folks pale in comparison to the number of years represented by the total number of CROs and Sponsors out there, with whom we are speaking with. We don’t build a feature without direct customer input. Sure, it takes a long time and the process requires quite a bit of front end effort convincing these folks that we’re the real deal. And even then, it’s about finding the “right” feature, and rejecting the vast majority of the features our customers ask for. Steve Jobs said it best. “It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don`t get on the wrong track or try to do too much.”
Without going through this process, I would not have experienced the positive reception to my roadshow if not for talking to the customer first. Come this Fall, you’ll see a solution built by the clinical research industry for the industry. Will it be perfect? Of course not! But I promise that we won’t stop working with you until we get it right. And our first step is to ensure we don’t have 22 tabs on it. See you soon.
About Me
I am the founder of goBalto, the easiest way to start your clinical study on the web. Before goBalto, I co-founded,Celltrion, a leading biopharmaceutical supplier and earned a paycheck from McKinsey & Company. I’m a father of 2, with a 3rd on the way – scheduled for October. I believe drug development can be made more efficient using simple, easy to use yet powerful online tools.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
UPDATE
So this morning, I was checking my new Twitter followers to thank them for the follow and noticed that a certain unnamed “CTMS” provider stopped following me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But if I were the operator of this solution, I would be more open to feedback. The Internet is littered by wannabe providers out there. People need a thicker skin if they want to earn the right to serve the global clinical research community. I love feedback, particularly when such feedback can help improve our solution.
In the end, I hope I didn’t offend said provider and apologize if feelings were hurt.
Jae,
Your post rings very true to me. Like you, I have been through the pain of starting a website full of resources for clinical research professionals, assuming my professional experience in the industry would result in a resource ‘to which they would come’, only to find it hard to monetise. I didn’t have any where near $1 million to spend, so fortunately had to make the hard decision much earlier and faster that a good idea doesn’t necessarily translate into a profitable business, despite all the wonderful comments industry colleagues might make about it.
Your right that lots of input is critical, but I’ve also found that input doesn’t necessarily translate to a buying decision. I hope the input you are getting results in sales, as we are all in need of a better, simpler CTMS product!
Just for the record, my issue with CTMS products is that higher management usually drives the wishlist of what a system could/should include, resulting in lots of bells and whistles, and heaps of data entry for the worker bees. But, then these same managers rarely access the all reports and information worker bees spend hours inputting. The tragedy is that there is now so much time spent in administration of clinical trials (ie spreadsheets, reports, CTMS/tracking), that we have less time for the things that really impact trial speed and success (support of and relationships with sites, pt recruitment). My view is that an effective CTMS should only include what people actually will use in the system – eg site contact details (recorded once) and various topline metric/performance measures, entered on as few tabs as possible, for increased efficiency.
Wish you ever luck in getting this right and financially successful!
Janelle,
I agree with all your points above. Particularly, your thought regarding having too many bells and whistles. I think it distracts from the core elements sponsors are looking for.
There is this great company I draw much of my inspiration from – 37 Signals. They developed a web-based project collaboration software, to directly compete against Microsoft’s Outlook and Projects. The name of 37 Signal’s product is called Basecamp. It emphasized simplicity and specifically left out much of the functionality of MS Projects. Guess what? It sold and continues to sell like bonkers.
I am a true believer of less is more. Part of what makes our approach different, is that we work with both senior management and the “worker bees” to identify the key issues in study start up. What we discovered is that there were 3 basic things they were looking for. We took this feedback and are now building a solution, which we believe will radically alter how folks will both start and manage studies.
Upon seeing our solution, a top-tier Venture Capitalist said it best. “Your solution is a paradigm shift which will democratize study startup for the entire clinical research industry.”
Can’t wait to unveil it this Fall.
Sounds good Jae. Let’s hope the industry is receptive. We need to get back to the basics in this highly regulated industry.
Hi Jae,
Nice post. It really resonates with my experience building and delivering SaaS solutions to the life sciences industry, albeit a bit upstream in the discovery space.
In my experience, most software vendors in the life sciences solutions space have a very strong historical enterprise orientation. They have built solutions for RFI/RFP driven processes, with heavy ownership by IT, informatics, and procurement at the buying organization, who have aggregated the needs of their users, and overlaid IT needs (security, TCO, admin tools, systems compliance, etc.), but have done so in the context of a feature list, rather than a holistic (and usable) solution. Therefore, you get solutions that check the boxes on features (“22 tabs”), but are very difficult to use.
This approach sort of worked for the vendors when you had very strong central IT organizations in pharma making top-down decisions on the “mission critical” systems for the organization – a decision was made, the tools were rolled out with centralized support, and you got to a few expert users within the organization that would learn the complexity of the solution because it was central to their job. However, the vast majority of potential users who could benefit from the solution would never get over the adoption hurdle because of terrible first user experiences. Expert users would then continue to dominate the feature requests and roadmaps, and software solutions would increase in complexity quickly, getting further and further from the needs of the broad user community in the organization.
Fortunately, a SaaS web application approach allows for a different go-to-market. A vendor can create a MVP and get it to users in a freemium model or free beta without a lot of centralized requirements and bureaucratic process, and build a passionate end-user community first, before aggregating demand to an enterprise or team deal. In my experience, this practitioner-centric model is increasingly possible (and required) in pharma, as organizations continue to move to outsourcing for all elements of the business, and teams are actually comprised of “virtual organizations” that span multiple organizations (industry, academic labs, outsource service organizations). The business model for pharma has changed, but the infrastructure to make it possible doesn’t exist (yet). The great news is that SaaS is the only way that these virtual organizations are going to be able to connect, collaborate, and get drugs to market going forward. And central to this is building tools that delight the end user first and foremost, and not as an afterthought.
Peter
Jae,
Just wondering if you are including investigators when consulting stakeholders? I hda recent experience with an online feasibility system, and emails from an unknown person sending the feasibility got very little cut-through (response). Could this be a limitation of your system (no matter how streamlined it now is for the sponsor)?
Janelle
@Janelle,
We consider investigators (as well as IRBs and academic research organizations) EQUALLY important to the study start up workflow. To this end, in addition to the roughly 50 sponsors/CROs engaged, we are working with just as many leading investigators as early adopters to help both DESIGN and beta test our solution.
Investigators have their own specific needs as it relates to study start up. To address their “pain points”, we have developed (in partnership with these investigators) their own set of tools/solutions. Based on the feedback to date, these tools will significantly simplify their workflow, provide greater visibility to investigators seeking studies and ultimately enhance investigator engagement.
In the month since I posted this article, we have engaged two highly recognizable pharmaceutical companies, THE leading CRO and 15 new investigators to pilot test our study startup tool behind the scenes.
We can’t wait to unveil our solution.
–jae
Hey folks, I just came across this article, which I believe was a response to my original post above. I am a bit curious as to why the author simply didn’t post his reply to this thread.
The author’s article is entitled “Well organized information simplifies user experience.” I agree with the title. However, I don’t equate the author’s approach of using 23 tabs with well organized information and a simplified user experience. Far from it.
Jae does not find tabs offensive
Let’s get one thing clear. I don’t hate tabs. Nor do I find them offensive. LOL. To make such an assertion completely misses the point of my original post. I wholeheartedly agree that tabs are a useful way to convey information, when used judiciously. However, “judiciously” does not mean slapping 23 tabs on top of a dashboard. [CORRECTION: In my original post, I stated “22 tabs”. It looks like I might have missed one tab! LOL.)
It takes little imagination to stick 23 tabs on an interface and call it a powerful and functional solution. Sure, clinical trial management is complex. And yes, we need to ensure that critical information is relayed to the user. The challenge is to implement a UI, which transcends simply putting a bunch of tabs on the screen (whether or not you can hide them, is besides the point). And it’s also not about “simply reducing tabs”. Its about designing a user interface which can convey the right information in an elegant manner.
What is do we mean by “Design”?
I also don’t buy the author’s argument that CTMS systems should be “designed” by professionals with extensive study management experience. I believe clinical research professionals provide valuable & indispensable perspective on what they want and should be the ultimate arbiter of the solution. However, to “design” it? No way. I think this is part of the reason why many CTMS solutions are so clunky. They’re designed by folks who have (as the author puts it) “extensive study management experience”, but little to no expertise in building interactive web based interfaces. Design should be left to folks who get web design interaction and UX.
Steve Jobs said it best. “Some people think design means how it looks. It’s not. It’s really how it works. You have to really grok what the solution is all about. It takes passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.”
To me, when I see 23 tabs, I see someone who has simply “swallowed” the solution without truly grokking it. Reading how the author talks about design, I get the feeling he is talking about the way the solution looks. Throwing up 23 tabs is akin to people not really trying to take the time to “grok” what the solution is all about. When I see the author’s solution, it’s like every other CTMS system out there. I truly feel sorry if he believes 23 tabs is the “best” UI approach to helping “create a simplified, linear approach to managing a complex process”. It’s not.
I have never used the author’s solution. And I applaud his efforts to try to make things “simple”. And perhaps the 23 tabs metaphor will work for some folks.
Me? Not a chance. I want to “design” something that transcends the “Excel Workbook on the web” interface. I want to challenge our industry to innovate and build something never before seen. We should not accept mediocrity.
A Lesson in History
Do you recall the MP3 players made by Rio in the late 1990s? They were all the rage until Apple joined the fray with their iPod. When Apple’s iPod arrived on the scene on Oct 23, 2001, people quickly took notice of its simple, but unique & elegant design and approach to delivering music. Before the iPod, everyone thought you needed something that resembled a Walkman, with lots of buttons and features (aka CTMS tabs). It was only after Apple showed a different (better) approach, did people realize how clunky the Rio truly was. It took less than a year for the iPod to become the most popular MP3 player on the planet. Shoot, people don’t even refer to them as MP3 players any longer. We all refer to them as iPods. If I had to guess, the author would have claimed the iPod’s signature click wheel as being too simple with not enough buttons.
I liken the existing CTMS solutions out there to Rio’s MP3 player. Lots of tabs, metrics and complicated reports. Sure, they all get the job done (barely). But dang, are they clunky. Even today, some folks tout their CTMS solution as being described as “slick”. Know why? Because, there’s nothing better out there. I bet when Rio first introduced their MP3 players, folks described them as “slick”. We’re looking forward to the “iPod” of CTMS. Because once that solution is released, people will wonder how they got by without it. Bye bye Rio.
In the end, it will be the user who decides. Let the best UI win.
PS – If you’ve used the author’s or any other CTMS solution, please share your experiences! Maybe I’m missing something. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
You nailed it. I work for a CTMS software vendor. I think our solution is far better than anyone I know.