A Global Design Language for Scientific Innovation

Bringing Cohesiveness to Disparate Acquisitions

Client: Life Technologies

Industry: Life Sciences, B2B

Services: Brand Strategy and Design, Product Strategy, Industrial Design

Challenge

Life Technologies was expanding quickly through merger and acquisition activities, and its various brands were therefore a random mix of unaligned entities. The brands stood for different things and offered different businesses including consumables, sequencing systems and software. To best leverage each brand’s equity, it was essential to integrate them within Life Technologies’ uniting corporate umbrella and branding strategy. The challenge for RKS was to lead the development of a coherent design language across brands and devices to clearly differentiate Life Technologies products from competitive offerings in the life sciences industry.

Process

To establish a holistic understanding of the workflow in scientific labs, the RKS research & strategy team interviewed key stakeholders and scientists in their environments. The analysis of routines, protocols, expectations and aspirations revealed many valuable insights. While reliability and accuracy were of highest priority, the study revealed that an inviting, engaging and emotionally appealing design would be welcomed in the scientific lab environment. The research team uncovered that the design should function intuitively and feel friendly, approachable and memorable. These insights were translated into the product design of the Ion Proton DNA Sequencer, the first product incorporating the new design language.

Solution

RKS created a new design language to unite the Life Technologies’ product line into a cohesive whole. Its first successful application was the revolutionary Ion Proton DNA Sequencer. Its body is designed to be as compact as possible for bench top use. Its sleek, minimal external housing makes cleaning as simple as possible. And, Ion Proton’s refined, yet simple, form enables even entry level user’s to rapidly navigate the sequencing process through its easy touch screen interface. This design language compliments the Ion Proton’s revolutionary technical capabilities, which lowers the time and cost of DNA sequencing to a few hours and $1,000 respectively.

“Creativity + Strategic Thinking = RKS. Atypical of many design firms, Ravi and Lance have brought together a team of passionate, talented designers, researchers, strategists and experience experts that deliver quality results.”

- Joseph Lee, Chief Design Officer of Life Technologies

Learn more about this program

RKS partnered with Life Technologies to establish categorical brand leadership and design language for enhancing medical discovery.

DNA sequencing is one of the most intriguing areas of scientific discovery, holding promise to unlock the human, animal, and plant genomes, resulting in longer and higher quality life for all. It’s potentially the key to the future of humanity. The knowledge gained will revolutionize understanding and treatment in medicine, enhance our food sources and guide us to a brighter future.

RKS’ experience working in the medical and scientific fields goes back more than 15 years. RKS was sought out to collaborate with Life Technologies and to develop a modern and cohesive design language leveraging our comprehensive research, strategy and design team’s experiences and methods to reposition the company and brand as the global leader in the category.

Life Technologies was tracking a successful path through expansion by merger and acquisition, but as is often the case with fast-growing companies, its various brands were a random mix of unaligned entities. The brands stood for different things, and included reagents and consumables, sequencing systems and software, primer and probe sets, etc.

To best leverage each brand’s equity, it was essential to integrate them within Life Technologies’ corporate umbrella. A comprehensive branding initiative was underway, and RKS was brought in to lead the industrial design strategy for the effort.

How do you protect the investments underlying discovery with design?

In the laboratory environment itself there was disarray. Equipment was mixed-and-matched, poorly or non-integrated. With no standardization of user interfaces, clinicians had to resort to primitive taped-on notes, checklists and reminders. There was a lack of clarity as to a machine operating properly, resulting in unnecessary mistakes and costly waste.

Cell lines and cultures with thousands of dollars invested in their generation were at risk of contamination or loss. The random systems grew devoid of design, requiring users to have specific knowledge of a disparate set of controls and operations, rather than an intuitive systemic culture.

RKS’ designers and researchers began the process of observing and interviewing scientists and stakeholders to gain a holistic understanding of the processes underway in the labs. It was important to know what the current technology was and how it connected with the forms and functions of the equipment surrounding them. Was it connected at all? What attributes were desirable, what aesthetics emotional fulfilling, what elements were confidence inspiring? The answers began to paint a picture of perceived innovation, accuracy, efficiency and quality, and in what areas these values were lacking.

The analysis of the users’ protocols, expectations and emotional aspirations began to reveal the solutions. The obvious was that the equipment needed to be better integrated, easy to operate and service.

But the deeper dive through RKS’ Psycho-Aesthetics methodology said more. Designs needed to not only function intuitively, but to also feel friendly, approachable and memorable. There was a sense of what looks correct in a laboratory environment and what does not; the design should be appropriate for its usage. Superfluous trim and decoration was distracting and conveyed a feeling of less precision. The visual language was an important part of the equipment’s usability. Bulky housings inferred inferior optics; color usage livened the environment but used excessively or incorrectly reduced the impression of precision and quality; footprint-to-height ratio impacted perceived stability and user confidence.

Spearheading Life Technologies’ new holistic visual design language is Ion Proton™, powered by innovative semiconductor chip technology, it is the first benchtop next-generation sequencer to offer fast and affordable human genome and human exome decoding.

It was designed to introduce a game-changer through a revolution in cost and speed, which promises to democratize and accelerate understanding diseases, genetically targeting medical treatments, enhancing our food sources and guiding the future of science.

In keeping with this seismic-shift, Ion Proton is one of the initial products to convey the new design language and branding that elevates Life Technologies as a holistic provider of laboratory and DNA sequencing solutions, while embodying respect for the brands clinicians regard. The design language enhances Ion Proton’s paradigm shifting potential of decoding the human genome in a day for $1,000, by making it a simple joy for operators to use - a solution aligned for the device’s pioneering work with a rewarding inspirational aesthetic that is appropriate for diverse global labs.

The result is helping capture attention not just for the leap it provides scientific discovery, but for a fresh and harmonizing language that helps convey the life-changing technology, while helping Life Technologies pave the path for a portfolio of integrated medical and scientific equipment.

Awards:

Strategy: IDEA (2014)

Spark Award — Spark! Highest Distinction (2012)

Good Design (2012)

Related Links:

Core77 on Ion Proton and Red Dot

Life Technologies Website

Ion Proton Sequencer Website

PC Mag — The Coolest Thing I Saw at CES 2012: Life Technologies Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer