To find out how their new chemotherapy treatment would affect patients’ everyday lives, a pharmaceutical company decided to run an observational study.
Audience
Patients with a late-stage cancer most common in men over 60
Site staff working on the clinical trial
Role
Information architecture, visual design, data visualization, content strategy
I collaborated with the digital strategy team, clinical team, and sponsor to come up with the basic needs for the site. Patients needed a dashboard to see their overall study progress, information about the study, resources about their cancer, how to guides, and information about the questionnaires.
I worked closely with our medical writers to shape the content for the wireframes. We separated the information about the questionnaires into smaller chunks so patients could easily see what a section was about and how long it would take to complete. Many of the questionnaires have official names that make more sense to clinicians than to laypeople. Because each questionnaire included many questions, we included a motivational message every time the patient completed a section.
We received feedback from the sponsor’s patient advocacy board that the dashboard had too much information given about the study overall. They wanted to know where they were today, not where they were in the study. I streamlined the dashboard and the process to start the questionnaire so patients could skip directly to the questionnaire if they wanted.
The sponsor wanted to share visualizations with the patients to show them the impact of their participation. These visualizations went through several iterations before we decided on a simpler graph with more information about each graph.
Results
Patients could complete questionnaires by themselves
Investigators gained deeper insights into study participants
Positive feedback from the sponsor and their patient advocates