A new Dark UI for Agilent
As the co-lead for the Gen6 project, I helped to build the foundation for an entirely new platform that required a Dark UI.
Gen5 Software (before)
This was a complete redesign of the legacy plate reader and imaging software Gen5. The Gen5 software was originally build 20 years ago and had been added on and modified ever since every time there was a new instrument or a new feature.
It suffered from many documented usability issues, including multiple un-anchored windows layered on top of each other and multi-layer nested dialogs. It had many features that users simply could not find.
Gen6 Software Journey
This project was started by an external agency but was taken over by us at the Usability and Design Center at Agilent when BioTek was acquired. Using heuristic methods, we discovered substantial usability issues that would have rendered it unreleasable. Thankfully, it was still early enough in the process that the necessary changes could be made.
The challenges:
Keep the original mobile-first design framework while improving functionality.
Align a new Dark UI existing Agilent Light UI design guidelines.
Stay ahead of current development with new designs while working to fix elements that were already coded.
Repeated usability tests to ensure that this new and completely different UI model would work with customers.
Gen6 Software (after)
