Frontier Scientific / eMolecules
Compound ordering in minutes, through a guided web workflow that replaced a manual procurement process.
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problem
Research teams needed to order and configure compounds through a workflow that was slow, manual, and difficult to navigate. Smaller startups were especially disadvantaged because they lacked the technical resources larger companies used to automate orders through APIs.
solution
Compound ordering should feel like a guided digital workflow rather than a manual procurement process. The goal was to preserve scientific precision while dramatically reducing effort, time, and operational friction. Restructure the experience around searchable discovery, clear service configuration, work-list management, and fast review so users could move from finding compounds to submitting accurate orders without unnecessary handoffs.
Context
Frontier Scientific provides outsourced compound management services for research and development teams, including inventory handling, reformatting, quality control, and procurement support for clients ranging from startups to large pharmaceutical companies.
At the time of this work, Frontier's sample management division served more than 90 research and development organizations, with total compounds under management exceeding 15 million. Samples went out as neat compounds, in solution, or in assay ready 96, 384, and 1536 well plates, usually delivered within 24 to 48 hours of an order. That mix is what made the ordering interface hard. A single request could span thousands of compounds across several plate layouts, so the workflow had to stay accurate at that scale instead of behaving like a simple cart. eMolecules acquired Frontier Scientific in September 2022.
My Role
I led the end-to-end UX process, including discovery, user research, workflow mapping, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, and collaboration with cross-functional teams to translate complex requirements into a usable platform experience.
Users and Constraints
Primary users included research teams at startups and larger pharmaceutical organizations. Constraints included scientific accuracy, low tolerance for errors, varying levels of user sophistication, and the need to support both self-serve ordering and operational efficiency behind the scenes.
Key Insight
The problem was not just speed. The existing workflow excluded smaller teams by forcing them into the same complexity without giving them the infrastructure larger companies already had.
Design Principles
Make complex ordering feel guided.
Surface technical detail only when it matters.
Support small teams without requiring enterprise infrastructure.
Create scalable patterns for future tools and services.
Impact
The redesign streamlined ordering, improved clarity for smaller research teams, reduced operational friction internally, and cut some complex workflows from days to about five minutes, measured in user testing.
Reflection / Takeaway
This project reinforced that simplicity in complex systems does not come from removing detail. It comes from sequencing detail at the right time so users can move forward with confidence.
Note on Access
Frontier describes the product as a secure, dedicated web interface where clients view their inventory in real time and order against it directly. It sits behind a client login, so the screens shown here come from my design files rather than the live site.
Ordering compounds in plates means holding two things at once: the list of what you picked and the map of where it is going. Putting the well map beside the list lets a researcher see what the list is doing while the volumes are still being set, so a mistake is caught where it is made rather than at the cart.
A work list of sixteen compounds used to mean typing the same volume sixteen times. One toolbar now writes label, vial, weight, volume, concentration and solvent to every selected row at once. The tedious path was not made faster, it was removed.
The rest of the platform is the route from question to shipment: a dashboard that answers before it is asked, search that keeps a large selection reversible, an order builder where any earlier choice stays editable, and a cart that splits by container type.
