Case Xcenda VIP 2.0
Designing a value proposition workshop tool for pharma
Background
Xcenda specializes in helping pharmaceutical companies craft message strategies. A critical part of this process, their Value Identification Process workshop, had become an analog and time-consuming bottleneck in their project flow, why they wanted to bring it into a digital format.
For each workshop, Xcenda typically drafts more than 70+ messages spread across themes like efficacy, safety, economics, and quality of life. The workshop invites a broad range of people from medical, regulatory, legal, and other teams to evaluate and discuss these message strategies. Until now, every message was printed in large format, taped to walls, and physically rearranged as notes were scribbled directly on the paper. The process was slow, difficult to transfer to digital, and made it nearly impossible for remote team members to participate.
My contribution
- Concept and pitch development
- Art direction
- Leading workshops
- Prototyping
- UX and UI design
- Documentation for developers
Challenges
The main challenge was to translate this highly interactive process into a digital tool without losing the flexibility that made the workshops work. The paper-based system was not only time-consuming but also physically restrictive, making it difficult for moderators to guide the conversation dynamically. There was no practical way to include remote participants in a meaningful way, and the manual effort required to capture notes and compile a final report after the session was a significant workload.
The current way of managing the workshops demanded a lot of hands-on administrative work: keeping track of invites, sending reminders, structured note-taking, and producing a clear report at the end. There was also no secure way of handling roles such as administrators, moderators, and participants.
Objectives
Our goal was to design a platform that felt natural and easy to use, grounded in the pain points and insights from our kick-off workshop with the Xcenda team in Florida. That session also helped in mapping the platform’s core goals, such as allowing participants to review and vote on messages beforehand, helping moderators prepare for the live workshop, providing moderators with flexible tools for arranging and grouping messages in real time, enabling quick note-taking, and offering a dedicated presentation mode. Finally, the platform had to ensure a unified experience for all attendees, whether online or on-site, and automate the final report of the workshop’s outcomes.
Built around four main pillars.
It starts with research. The Xcenda team looks into the client’s case, gathers data points, and reviews any existing research. From that, they begin shaping a set of message strategies. Once these are in place, an administrator sets up the workshop. They upload the messages and assign a moderator to keep things moving.
The moderator’s role is to bring the right people into the workshop. Attendees are invited, and before the session they get a chance to review the messages and vote on them. This early feedback helps shape the discussion. If new ideas come up during this stage, moderators can turn them into new messages so they’re ready for the final workshop.
The workshop itself can be run on-site or online. Attendees discuss the messages, look at how they might be grouped, and share perspectives on what resonates. A note-taker captures these conversations so nothing is lost.
At the end, the team has a clear workshop report. It includes the selected messages and groupings, ready to feed directly into the client’s strategy channels.
Running and managing the workshops
The platform is built around distinct roles, giving administrators and moderators the tools they need to run a seamless workshop.
For administrators, there’s a central hub for creating workshops, managing clients, and assigning team members. This simplifies all the upfront logistical work. Moderators get a dedicated workspace that supports them before, during, and after the session. Ahead of the workshop, they can invite attendees and fine-tune messages based on initial feedback. A key feature is the ability to see voting progress in real-time, giving them a clear picture of how messages are performing with the group before the live discussion begins.
During the workshop, a unique presentation mode keeps everyone focused and in sync, it is designed to mirror the attendees interface to give an added sense of familiarity. The presentation mode allows the moderator to display voting results and guide the conversation, diving into specific messages for discussion as well as a digital board where moderators can freely group and arrange messages in real-time, mimicking the old paper-based system.
Finally, the platform includes an integrated note-taking tool and a space to finalize message groups. The process ends with a semi-automated report that gathers all the workshop data, notes, and rationales for the selected messages, making the wrap-up quick, efficient and streamlined.
Review and voting mechanics
A key part of making the workshop efficient is having attendees review and vote on messages beforehand. This allows everyone to engage with the material in their own time and provide comments that help moderators prepare, ensuring the live session is both focused and productive. Moderators have the flexibility to open and close this pre-voting phase, and for shorter workshops, the voting tools can even be used live during the session.
When an attendee logs in, they are greeted by a dashboard that gives a clear, visual overview of their voting progress, designed to encourage them to get started. The voting process itself is designed to be intuitive. For a quick, zoomed-out view, they may simply drag and drop messages into three columns: “keep”, “maybe” or “discard.”
For a closer look, clicking on a message opens a detailed view with all its data points and references. Here, they can leave comments to help shape the conversation and provide specific feedback, like suggesting which country, segment or grouping a message might best fit. The platform is designed to feel less like a static information hub and more like a hands-on tool, a space to capture ideas and ensure everyone arrives at the workshop fully prepared.
Atomic design system
I built the design system from the ground up, keeping it lean, agile, and focused on the project’s scope rather than creating an overly designed library. The structure follows the classic atomic design principles with atoms, molecules, and organisms, and is built on a solid foundation of design tokens, which ensures consistency and alignment with the developer workflow and codebase.
A core part of my approach when building UI designs is building flexible and nested components. For instance, the modal component is a basic framework where designers can quickly swap content with pre-made or custom-made blocks, making it a highly flexible component and easy to update throughout the entire platform. Everything is built with variants and properties in mind, allowing for quick edits and rendering different edge cases and UI steps in a flow, as well as testing and prototyping on new ideas and concepts. The table component is a good example of this, as its columns and icons can be easily reconfigured, causing the layout to adapt automatically, making it easy to cover different use cases and steps in a flow.
Reflections
Designing a specialized tool that empowers experts in their daily workflow was incredibly satisfying with way more potential to go.
While the platform successfully digitized Xcenda’s workflow and was met with very positive feedback, the process itself sparked more ideas than we had time to implement. If I had the opportunity to continue, I would focus on more user testing, including happy path testing to refine the general feel and usability, alongside deep dives into expert-driven features. The goal would be to refine and expand features, fine-tune the UI, and add more micro-animations to improve its intuitive use.
To ground the next phase of work, I would begin by developing detailed personas. This would formalize the deep user understanding we gained from the client and ensure that every future design decision remains intentionally user-centric. These personas would then directly inform the creation of new prototypes for testing and provide the critical lens needed to make significant, targeted improvements to the platform’s accessibility.
What would i do differently If I were to continue the project:
- Conduct more user testing to gather deeper, actionable insights.
- Develop detailed user personas to sharpen the focus on user needs.
- Use personas to make significant, targeted accessibility improvements.
- Create new prototypes to test and validate all design refinements.
- Explore and prototype concepts for a dedicated mobile experience.