Case Study: Financial Management for Research Innovation
Helping scientists save lives—by giving them back their time.
Client: Leading Medical Research Institute (Confidential)
Role: UX Lead & Design Consultant
Team: Big 4 Consultancy (multidisciplinary design, strategy, and engineering team)
Goal: Identify impactful opportunities to improve research operations for a leading medical research institute
Opportunity: Principal Investigators (PIs) lacked intuitive tools to manage their research grants, leading to inefficiencies and stress that distracted from their core scientific work.
My team fulfilled the human-centered design process from discovery to delivery.
Understand the Experts
Conducted in-depth interviews with PIs to deeply understand their goals, frustrations, and grant-related workflows.Map and Prioritize
Synthesized findings using a custom research methodology that helped surface the most critical needs and pain points.Prototype with Purpose
Designed interactive prototypes focused on high-value features:Grant timelines for tracking the time and money remaining on grants, as well as renewal status and renewal requirements
Spend categories to see how funds were allocated (e.g., staff, supplies), with easy paths to detailed financial breakdowns and spending details (e.g., assistant names, receipts)
Graphs and charts for forecasting future financial needs based on real data
Test & Iterate
Ran usability tests with PIs to validate designs and refine based on feedback. This tight feedback loop allowed us to make confident, user-driven decisions.Collaboration for Seamless Handoff
Worked closely with the institute’s engineering team throughout implementation, using structured prototypes and user stories that made development fast, intuitive, and aligned with user expectations. I also supported the UX QA process to ensure polish and usability at launch.
These are artistic representations of the original prototypes, which are confidential.
The result was a financial management tool that gave PIs exactly what they needed – clarity, control, and confidence in how their research funds were used. Like Rocket Money for medical research, the platform was easy for engineers to build and immediately useful for PIs from launch.
The trust we built with stakeholders, along with the clarity of the prototypes and testing insights, meant the product required minimal iteration post-release. It freed up PIs to focus on what they do best: groundbreaking research that saves lives.
This project showed how a workshop-driven, sprint-inspired design process can utilize deep expertise, reduce development risk, and deliver powerful results.