About Genentech
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Genentech is a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients with serious or life-threatening medical conditions. They are among the world's leading biotech companies, with multiple products on the market and a promising development pipeline.
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Trainee Production & Manufacturing Internship
The summer of my 3rd year of UC Davis, I worked as an intern for Genentech. To prepare for the opening of a new manufacturing plant, the Manufacturing Initiative Group (MIG) hired me to help create an accelerated training program to quickly onboard technicians. I helped film various technical demonstrations, and created a website via Google Sites to host them. In addition, I created a system by which training program progress reports could be sent monthly to trainees. Please expand the sections below to learn more about that particular project.
training program progress report system
About This Project
Being that many employees were going to be onboarded as a result of the new manufacturing plant, there needed to be an efficient way to communicate their training program progress data. While MIG (the team I worked on) had access to all of this data, it was not being disseminated to trainees. The goal of this project was to establish a system by which training program progress data could be sent out to employees all at once, rather than sending out individual emails to trainees. Unfortunately, I cannot share the final product due to a proprietary NDA I signed, but I will describe my approach and process to try and paint a clear picture.
Wireframing
Due to software limitations, wireframes for the report were made in Microsoft Word. The wireframes contained placeholders for the trainee's name, percentage completion in the program, a graph of their progress over time, and various verbal descriptions of the results. I sent the design to my superiors for feedback, as well as some actual technicians (which were considered the target user group of this report).
Finding a System for Distribution
One of the more difficult aspects of this project was finding a way to create personalized versions of the reports for each trainee and distribute them without having to send individual emails. I came across an excellent service (that seems to be thriving in today's competitive mass email marketing client industry) named CakeMail. CakeMail allowed for the mass distribution of personalized emails, and provided a variety of customizable templates.
Design and Distribution
I adapted my wireframe design to one of the CakeMail templates and obtained feedback from my superiors. Ideally, I would have reviewed the final design with the core user group, but due to time constraints, I was unable to obtain any user feedback. However, this system is still used by MIG today, and continually provides trainees with their training program progress.
Being that many employees were going to be onboarded as a result of the new manufacturing plant, there needed to be an efficient way to communicate their training program progress data. While MIG (the team I worked on) had access to all of this data, it was not being disseminated to trainees. The goal of this project was to establish a system by which training program progress data could be sent out to employees all at once, rather than sending out individual emails to trainees. Unfortunately, I cannot share the final product due to a proprietary NDA I signed, but I will describe my approach and process to try and paint a clear picture.
Wireframing
Due to software limitations, wireframes for the report were made in Microsoft Word. The wireframes contained placeholders for the trainee's name, percentage completion in the program, a graph of their progress over time, and various verbal descriptions of the results. I sent the design to my superiors for feedback, as well as some actual technicians (which were considered the target user group of this report).
Finding a System for Distribution
One of the more difficult aspects of this project was finding a way to create personalized versions of the reports for each trainee and distribute them without having to send individual emails. I came across an excellent service (that seems to be thriving in today's competitive mass email marketing client industry) named CakeMail. CakeMail allowed for the mass distribution of personalized emails, and provided a variety of customizable templates.
Design and Distribution
I adapted my wireframe design to one of the CakeMail templates and obtained feedback from my superiors. Ideally, I would have reviewed the final design with the core user group, but due to time constraints, I was unable to obtain any user feedback. However, this system is still used by MIG today, and continually provides trainees with their training program progress.
training program website / User research
Project Overview / Process
I built a website to house training videos, provide additional education resources, and serve as the main portal for the new training program. I created a survey, with the assistance of my then supervisor, and administered it to users prior to wireframing. The purpose of this survey was to determine user needs, and ensure that the subsequent design included the commonalities expressed by users. This project was in the beginning of my user research career, and I did not have any access to prototyping tools, so I resorted to good old pen and paper! I developed the site using a Roche Google Sites template and based the design off my wireframes.
After developing a prototype, I conducted my first moderated user test ever! It was very casual, and due to time constraints, I was only able to acquire three participants. I had users perform very basic navigation tasks, and took notes with pen and paper. I compared the narratives obtained from each users to obtain a couple usability issues, which I remedied in the final design.
I built a website to house training videos, provide additional education resources, and serve as the main portal for the new training program. I created a survey, with the assistance of my then supervisor, and administered it to users prior to wireframing. The purpose of this survey was to determine user needs, and ensure that the subsequent design included the commonalities expressed by users. This project was in the beginning of my user research career, and I did not have any access to prototyping tools, so I resorted to good old pen and paper! I developed the site using a Roche Google Sites template and based the design off my wireframes.
After developing a prototype, I conducted my first moderated user test ever! It was very casual, and due to time constraints, I was only able to acquire three participants. I had users perform very basic navigation tasks, and took notes with pen and paper. I compared the narratives obtained from each users to obtain a couple usability issues, which I remedied in the final design.