Applied Biosystems™ provides innovative instruments and reagents to accelerate academic and clinical research, drug discovery and development, pathogen detection, environmental analysis, and forensic DNA analysis. Applied Biosystems™ instruments and reagents have been trusted in the lab for over 20 years by the world’s top scientists. Researchers who demand efficiency, accuracy, and gold-standard technology use Applied Biosystems integrated systems for sequencing, flow cytometry, and real-time, digital and end point PCR—from sample prep to data analysis.

Acquisition of Life Technologies by Thermo Fisher Scientific completed, creating an unrivaled leader in serving research, specialty diagnostics, and applied markets. As part of the merged company, the Life Technologies brand remains an innovator in the life sciences and a supplier of products across numerous research and applied markets.

Limina’s primary goal working with this leading scientific instrumentation and bioinformatics firm was to implement a strategy for consistency, usability, and information-design-driven market differentiation across their diverse and integrated lines of software products.

Over the course of three years, Limina worked with engineering teams on more than 16 different software applications. The application types we worked on include, laboratory information management systems (LIMS), complex microarray display and cross experiment microarray data visualizations designed for easy interactive data-mining, acquisition and analysis workflow optimization, biothreat detection, instrument setup and calibration, real-time PCR data analysis, gene sequencing, gene mapping, and target assay definition.

Limina also created a set of usability and interface design principles and implementation guidelines which serve as company-wide standard for AB engineering developers to use to maintain interface design consistency across applications.

According to customer feedback “the result is a significantly improved application that is much easier to use”. Enhanced usability was one of the primary factors that improved the product’s competitiveness.

Our contribution the the FacsDiva product included: UI design enhancement, workflow, data visualization, and iconography.