Scope of work

• Full-scale web app

• User research

• Wireframing

• Interaction design

The Problem

1. Currently the dental lab order to checkout process is broken. Today, submitting a case, transferring files, keeping track of your order, and getting consistent product outcomes are challenging. Additionally your lab may offer dental applications you need so you always need to keep a backup just in case.

Process & Design Thinking

Desktop Labs is a 0-1 initiative that began with the goal to improve the user experience of producing a fabricated product. The team set out to build a platform that would improve productivity, increase hardware utility, enhance customer satisfaction, and produce a consistent fabricated end product. The product team focused on driving value in the following key areas: case intake, order management, communication and support and successful outcomes.

Market research and User Interviews

The marketing organization commissioned market research to help all commercial teams better understand the breadth and depth of the opportunity. The product team used the research to build assumptions and conducted user interviews.

Here is what we found:

Chair-Side

• Sales of 3D printers to dental practices have long lead times driven by uncertainty around true cost, in-office adoption the new workflow by staff and acceptance of the new type dental appliances by patients.

• Dentists would be more willing to buy a finished dental application produced by a 3D printer from a lab before investing in hardware and doing it themselves.

• Dentists were more likely to purchase a 3D printer after having adopted a lab connected digital workflow that absolves them from producing the finished dental appliance.

• Reliability, support and ease of use is very important to chair-side dental practices.

• Dentists were unclear who they were dealing with at the lab. They often wanted to speak directly to the lab tech to ensure products were being produced to spec.

• Overcommunication between practices and labs has become common resulting in burnout.

Labs

• Labs buy twice as many printers on average than a dental practice.

• Dental labs use an average of 2.5 labs to provide redundancy and a complete product offering.

• Labs are experiencing difficulties hiring and retaining technical talent.

• Dental labs will purchase printers to add digital workflows if can be justified by any reasonable amount of customer demand.

• File management is a problem that causes the need to maintain multiple unique workflows which impacts turn around time.

• Uptime, reliability and productivity is important when running a high performing lab business

Proposed Solution

based on assumptions informed by market research

1. Simple and instant case creation

2. Transparent order management

3. Saved global and case preferences for dentists

4. Predictive file management systems

5. Connected communication with dedicated technical support

6. No visibility into the project. Users must return to the project page repeatedly until they have selected the correct project.

7. Simplified inputs for consistently dental appliances produced to acceptable specifications

8. Scalable solutions to make an investment in a digital workflow worthwhile

The Visual Implementation 

I recommended using Polaris, Shopify’s UI kit, in an efforts to speed up design and development

Design Exploration & Ideation

Break down designs into components and outcomes to validate interaction for stakeholders and clearly document them for use by dev team

Case creation

Easily discoverable products with transparent pricing

Organizing product offering by category with transparent pricing was done with intent to build trust in the platform.

Building a Case

Adding case details for better outcomes

Order Setup

Unique identifiers and case notes

Treatment Options

Tooth picker, attributes and styles

Patient Files

File transfer and management

Modular Content Cards

Shipping

Choose a shipping method and ensure your order is going to the right place

Order Summery

Final Thoughts

The team spend a great deal of time simplifying the experience by including only what was need in the first release of the product. This could only have been done with great market research and user interviews that gave the deep understanding that was needed.

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