Designing a laboratory operations platform that helps cell biology teams manage inventory, protocols, equipment, and scheduling in one place.
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Research laboratories generate huge amounts of data, protocols, samples, and experimental materials every day, yet many still rely on spreadsheets, lab books, and shared drives, to manage critical work. As teams grow and projects become more complex, fragmented workflows slow research, make onboarding difficult, increase risk of costly mistakes, and reduce collaboration.
Design a platform for cell biology laboratories that helps coordinate lab work, reduces operational friction, and allows researchers to focus on science rather than logistics.
Research objectives:
Interviews were conducted with students, postdocs, lab managers, and technicians from cell biology laboratories. The goal was to identify key details about their daily lab activities and where the experimental workflow could be improved.
There is no existing database to follow equipment maintenance details and deadlines for intervention.
No precise information about when lab protocols are updated, and no centralized access to all of them.
No available lab calendar for everyone to access, book, and edit schedules for shared lab spaces and equipment.
A delayed antibody, chemical, or plasmid delivery can postpone an entire experiment by days or weeks.
Critical information about inventory, ordering of reagents and chemicals, and instrument booking is scattered across emails, shared drives, and paper logs.
Time is lost searching for information. Lack of centralized visibility into lab resources slows down experiments.
New lab members feel overwhelmed in their first weeks.
Problem statement
Postdoctoral fellows and scientists in cell biology labs need a better way to manage laboratory operations and workflows so they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time conducting research.
track equipment maintenance and intervention deadlines?
centralize access to lab orders, inventory, and experimental protocols?
coordinate instrument bookings with a shared calendar?
Before any screens were designed, I mapped how a researcher’s day unfolds, how the product should be structured, and what the earliest layouts needed to communicate.
The journey map follows a researcher through a full experiment cycle, from planning to logging results, highlighting how each phase feels and where the process could be streamlined.
The sitemap outlines the structure of the Cellura Scientific platform, from the dashboard and inventory to lab protocols, calendar, and ordering.
Early low-fidelity wireframes exploring the registration flow and the main dashboard layout before moving into high-fidelity design.
The high-fidelity screens covering registration, the dashboard, lab protocols, ordering, and the calendar.
New team members register for lab access.
See lab status of equipment, animals, work in progress and recent updates.
Expand any card for full detail without leaving the dashboard.
Browse and manage protocols for working with oocytes, eggs and embryos.
Coordinate instrument bookings and lab events on one shared calendar.
Track every reagent and supply order from request to delivery.
I wanted to ensure that the features designed are what the user expects and wants out of this software. Hearing additional feedback and suggestions can help better tailor it towards the user’s needs.
Watching first-time users navigate the software would determine if the main menu options are helpful and if users are able to easily complete their tasks without errors.
This will allow me to test what users liked, what frustrated them, and what they would like to improve, and whether they will use this product again.
There was a very high satisfaction among testers with zero difficulty onboarding, locating features and identifying proper functionality.
There were two points where some users experienced slight hesitation:
This new Troubleshooting screen was designed to address users’ need to track and document all troubleshooting experiments conducted in the lab. Troubleshooting cards categorize each experiment, displaying detailed information on the type of experiment. This new screen facilitates communication within the lab, promotes transparency, and ensures that all team members have access to and can implement the latest experimental updates.
These ideas are not reflected in the prototype, but I believe would positively improve the user experience based on their feedback.
Researchers could search experiments, protocols, troubleshooting records, samples, and inventory from a single search bar.
A centralized page where newcomers will have a clear understanding of the lab’s principal discoveries and access to the reference research articles.
Notify users when reagents are running low, samples are nearing expiration, and experiments require follow-up actions.