How do you redesign a complex system used across lab work and daily animal care?

ARDM supported much more than laboratory research. The wider system connected protocols, analysis, facilities, stock and planning with animal records, feeding, movements, veterinary care and everyday operational tasks.

The project was part of a competitive tender. We received access to selected areas of the existing platform, mainly laboratory processes and animal care, so before designing anything I had to reconstruct how these parts worked and how they connected to the wider system.

CONTEXT

The challenge was to understand and redesign selected parts of a much larger operational ecosystem with only limited access to the existing product.

Existing-product audit · Flow mapping · Pains & gains · Information architecture · Competitive research · Prototyping · UI design

DESIGN & COLLABORATION TOOLS

A practical toolkit for product design and collaboration

On desktop, users needed access to large amounts of interconnected information: protocols, animals, laboratory data, stock, planning and administration.

In daily animal care, the priorities were completely different. Users often needed to identify one animal and perform a specific action quickly — record feeding, movement, grooming or veterinary care — without navigating through the full complexity of the desktop system.

PROBLEM

One system to support few very different ways of working.

MY WORK

Before redesigning the interface, I rebuilt the logic behind it.

Reconstructing the existing workflows

I analysed recordings and available materials from the existing ARDM platform, mapped screens and transitions, and documented pains, gains and dependencies between actions.

Because I was working with only a fragment of the full system, understanding what happened before and after each screen was essential before changing the interface itself.

Turning complexity into one consistent structure

I then reorganised navigation, information architecture and common interaction patterns across the selected modules.

The goal was not to simplify the domain by removing information, but to make a complex product easier to understand and more predictable to use.

KEY DECISIONS

Desktop kept the depth of the system. Mobile was redesigned around the task happening right now.

What was an effect?

The desktop experience needed to support searching, filtering, comparing and editing large datasets while preserving context across different parts of the platform.

Simply shrinking that interface for mobile would not solve the actual problem. Instead, I focused the mobile experience around fast access to the animal and the action the user needed to perform.

QR scanning became a shortcut from the physical animal to its digital record, followed by contextual actions such as feeding, outings, training, grooming or veterinary care.

The two interfaces shared the same system and information architecture, but no longer had to behave in the same way. Desktop supported complex data work, while mobile prioritised quick actions in the context in which animal care actually happened.

The biggest challenge for me...

...was finding the right level of change. I needed to improve navigation and workflows enough to demonstrate a clear new direction, while respecting domain logic that had been built over years and parts of the system we did not have full access to.

The final supplier decision was driven largely by commercial considerations, but the process itself required working with ambiguity, incomplete information and a highly interconnected enterprise product.

SPECIAL FEATURE OF THE PROJECT

Designing a credible product direction without seeing the whole product.

ARDM was much larger than the areas included in the tender. That meant every design decision had to work not only for the screens I could see, but also make sense as part of a wider ecosystem that included laboratory work, animal management, facilities, inventory and administration.

The proposal progressed through multiple stages of the tender and I presented the final concept directly to the client in Marseille.

Product Designer · UX/UI Designer · Dog&human trainer

I turn complex problems into clear, useful, and buildable products. If you’re looking for a Product Designer who connects user needs, business goals, and technology - let’s talk. ;-)

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