The pace of technological and scientific innovation is exponential, and it has never been more important for companies to incorporate continuous education as a part of its day-to-day operations. Internally, the flow of information between employees spread across the globe happens in real-time and the effective communication and use of new information is what keeps a company ahead of its competition. Externally, as the pace of discovery accelerates, continuous education for customers is vital to the commercial success of new products and services. How does a company educate and communicate complex and rapidly changing information in an intuitive and engaging way? This article is the story of how a global pharmaceutical company chose to work with us to design & deploy an intuitive mobile AR experience for its global employees.
When we first engage with any client we start the DISCOVERY process with a series of questions - what are the crucial bits of information that has to be communicated? What user outcomes are they aiming for? During this phase, extensive research is conducted to better understand all aspects the subject we are trying to communicate. We then move to the DEFINITION stage where we "mold" the research into a more focused form. For this particular project, we arrived at the final design after a few sessions with the client : 3 scales of interactive 3D visualizations each communicating a single "scale" of information in an intuitive and interactive way with just enough interaction to reinforce the dense information being transferred.
After the DISCOVERY and DEFINITION phase, we dove into the DEVELOP & DELIVER phase of our process: 3D models, animations and interactions were developed representing the various scales of visualization necessary to convey the required information. We were able to deploy and iterate in near real-time using our proprietary YUMEGO™ app platform, and then to analyse the usage data in order to help guide design refinements - seeing what worked and what didn't work and incorporating user behavior and feedback into new design iterations. As a testament to the flexibility and power of our platform, we were able to make last minute changes to the content less than a day before the first of many internal demos. Over the course of the next few weeks, we continued to implement important UX features and improvements. Finally, in mid-March, as the world entered COVID-19 lock-down, the prototype was demonstrated to about 60 employees of our client spread around the globe.
The feedback has been phenomenal - many of these early adopters commented on the high quality AR visualization (actual screenshot shown below), the well designed UX, as well as the ease (and COVID-safe) of accessing the demo on their own personal devices. Our aim was to make a deeply complex subject matter into something intuitive and fun. During that last group demo, there were a even a few audible "whoa!" and "cool!" from this group of medical experts. These reactions were the best kind of validation for us and our vision to create enriching and informative AR experiences.
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