UX Project: Global Pharmaceutical Company

From Assumptions to Insights: Building Data-Informed Digital Products in Pharma

CLIENT

Lundbeck, 2020-2021

MY ROLE

Agile dev., user research, mockups & prototypes, usability testing

Challenge

The organisation was transitioning to agile ways of working across multiple product initiatives. At the same time, they had untapped potential in how data was used to inform decisions as their data was available, but rarely structured into insights that shaped design or prioritization.

My challenge was to help teams adopt user-centred practices and integrate UX into agile delivery. That meant building strong relationships between product, users, and stakeholders, and ensuring that decisions were grounded in real user needs and evidence rather than assumptions.

The process: Agile Development

I joined the project at the kickoff of the client’s new agile delivery model. Every product idea was evaluated through desirability, viability, and feasibility before work began – and UX played a key role in that validation.

My role was to ensure users were involved continuously: from early hypothesis testing through interviews, wireframes and mockups, to usability testing with functional prototypes. I kept a close dialogue with stakeholders, users, the product owner, and developers to make sure we focused on features that would be genuinely valuable both to end users and the business.

Together with the team, I helped balance MVP priorities vs. “nice-to-have” scope. The first MVP launched after eight weeks, and new releases followed as we identified additional value drivers such as reducing time, risk, or resource costs. Throughout, I worked to demonstrate the value of a continuous UX focus in an enterprise agile context.

What are we aiming to build?

Each product started with structured exploration: who our users were, what assumptions we wanted to test, and importantly, which value drivers we aimed to influence.

I created an interview guide to ensure we understood users’ existing workflows, pain points, and opportunities before proposing solutions. Core questions focused on real tasks, challenges, error patterns, and how people imagined an improved system could work.

We tested assumptions early, even those coming from the product owner, so we could validate desirability before investing in viability or feasibility.

Define & Ideation

Once research insights were gathered, we mapped primary user groups, documented workflows, and pinpointed where friction and waste occurred.

This gave us a solid foundation to ideate potential solutions. My role was to keep functionality prioritized: ensuring basic and critical flows came first so users could successfully complete their intended work, with additional enhancements phased in later.

Example of mockups from Project #1:

Wireframes, mockups & prototypes

I translated core user needs into early sketches, wireframes, and interactive mockups. Starting with paper and moving into Sketch/Figma allowed us to share ideas quickly with developers and domain experts and align on direction early.

As soon as I felt confident that the main functionalities were in place, I turned the wireframes into mockups and later into clickable prototypes.

As a team, we aimed to release the first MVP as soon as the tool could provide real value in users’ everyday work. This meant continuously prioritizing and finding compromises together with developers, so we didn’t spend time on technically complex tweaks at the expense of highly valuable, low-effort functionality.

This iterative design process helped the team:

test ideas fast
challenge new functionality for real value
avoid design changes that compromise user experience
focus on scalable, flexible patterns

Once the mockups were developed, we began interviewing users again to get their immediate reactions to the tool. I was especially interested in first impressions and how they expected to navigate and perform their tasks. I gave a short explanation of the goal of the tool, but did not explain how the functionality worked. I shared my screen with the mockups and asked users to talk through what they would do and what they expected to happen. This made it easy to validate whether we were on the right path in terms of both functionality and design.

I continued to iterate on the mockups based on this feedback, while developers worked in parallel on elements we were confident about.

To strengthen consistency and scalability, I also worked with patterns and reusable UI components. This made it easier to design new functionality, maintain a coherent experience across features, and support faster development.

All prototypes were created to simulate realistic scenarios and data states, allowing both users and stakeholders to evaluate whether the solution supported the right decisions and workflows.

Examples of wireframes from Project #2 (1st and 2nd version) of the overview

Test, test, test

As development progressed, we shifted focus toward the MVP and began testing with functional builds. I created a structured test guide outlining specific tasks we wanted users to complete, with success criteria and common failure points.

During sessions, I observed:

whether users completed tasks
where they struggled or paused
where workflows didn’t align with expectations

I documented all observations and prioritized actionable refinements, then handed these back to the development team as user stories or UI adjustments.

This feedback loop ensured the first MVP was grounded in real user behaviour, not assumptions.

Output

By embracing a user-centred, data-informed agile process, the organisation was able to deliver MVP tools that reduced manual effort, reduced risk, and provided tangible value to users early while strengthening stakeholder alignment and confidence in the product direction.