Despite a reputation for being cynical and germaphobic, I ultimately think that most of the people working in pharma are hugely optimistic. They keep going into the office to run assays or analyze data or build web apps, with the belief that if they toil away on something for years, it will lead to a life-changing treatment. At a recent Town Hall, Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan said that picking up one of our medicines was “like holding a miracle in the palm of your hand.” One little pill could prevent suffering, give someone more time, change an outcome.
I’m channeling the bold optimism of my pharma peers by putting a lot of faith and hope into our Design System. I see the little UI components - pills, inputs, filters - as a cure for an ailing product team. Not only do I hope that these small elements will fix our design process, I hope that they will remedy problems with our culture too.
Our designers have been siloed longer than we should, prioritizing speed over cohesion. Frankly, it matches the perspectives of our customers: “Build me a new registration system because our lab doesn’t use the same terminology as the lab with an existing system.” It’s led to an amazing array of interfaces and multiple ways to do the same thing.
Is it irrational to believe that shared assets will lead to shared objectives and shared responsibility? Will a design and engineering team that communicates and collaborates over these little components lead to product teams that take the time to build for maintainability and impact? Will they be willing to put up with a little friction at the start so that they can adapt at the speed of science in the future? That’s ultimately what I’m hoping for.
I see forms sharing data sources leading to cleaner data, more synchronized updates, less manual entry. I see designers and engineers spending less time on legibility and rebuilding tables, more time on complex workflows, improving performance, and the stuff that leads to breakthroughs.
It’s a lot of faith to put in a pill, but here’s to hope.