David Murray
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Case Study · 04

RSS Chemicals

A research‑driven mobile redesign of how lab managers and researchers track hazardous chemicals — search, scan, and container workflows rebuilt around the way the work actually happens at the bench.

Role
UX Designer & Researcher
Product
Risk and Safety Solutions — RSS Chemicals (iOS)
Timeline
2023 — 2024
The redesigned RSS Chemicals home: a lab member's chemical list with search, Current Inventory and Chemical Database tabs, per-chemical CAS numbers and form, and a bottom tab bar with Inventory, Scan, Warnings, and More.

Context

Risk and Safety Solutions builds the software that universities, healthcare systems, and research institutions use to run their safety and compliance programs. RSS Chemicals is the mobile app that runs underneath one of those programs — the tracking of hazardous chemicals across labs, stockrooms, and research facilities.

The people using it are lab managers and researchers, usually standing at a bench or walking a stockroom, often in PPE, often with one hand on a container. The app is the link between the chemical in front of them and the institution’s record of where every regulated substance lives, how much is on hand, and what its hazards are.

The problem

The existing app worked, but slowly. Search returned the wrong things. Scanning was buried in a side menu. Container information was tangled in with chemical information, which meant simple tasks — like finding the bottle on shelf B2 or adding a new container of acetone — took more taps and more guessing than they should have.

The cost wasn’t cosmetic. Bad inventory data is a compliance problem and a safety problem — missed expirations, ghost stock, hazards no one can locate. Every friction point in the app pushed users toward shortcuts that undermined the record the institution was depending on.

Discovery

I ran the research alongside the design. Interviews and shadowing sessions with lab managers, researchers, and compliance officers — people doing the actual chemical tracking, the actual audits, the actual reorders. The goal was to see how the app fit (or didn’t) into how lab work really happens, not how we’d imagined it would.

Four problems showed up across nearly every session:

  1. Search returned the wrong things. Ranking didn’t reflect what users were actually looking for. A search for “ethanol” would bury the researcher’s own stock under unrelated database entries.
  2. Scanning was hidden. The fastest way to find or add a container is to scan its barcode. The scanner lived behind a secondary menu, which made the fast path the slow one.
  3. Containers and chemicals were tangled together. A single chemical can have many containers in many rooms. The old details page mixed both into one dense list, so users had to scan past chemical metadata to get to the bottle they were looking for.
  4. Adding a container was hard to find. The most frequent write action in the app was buried — people would describe the workflow and then trail off, unsure where to start.

The redesign

Three areas of the app got the most attention — search, add, and scan. Each one shipped through old‑vs‑new comparisons in usability testing rounds, and each one drove a specific design move.

Search

Old (left) vs. new (right). The old inventory list was dense and color‑heavy — blue chemical names, inline hazard pictograms, a header that pushed everything below the fold. The new list lifts the chemical’s identifying information forward (name, CAS, form, quantity badge) and gives it room to breathe. Search and scan moved into the header so the fastest actions sit where the thumb already is. Click to zoom & pan
Side-by-side comparison: the old inventory list with dense blue chemical names and inline hazard icons, next to the new list with cleaner typography, quantity badges, and search in the header.
What changed, annotated: terminology brought in line with how users actually talk about the inventory; ranking adjusted so a search for “ethanol” surfaces the user’s own stock first; scanning relocated from a buried menu into a primary tab so the fast path is the obvious one. Click to zoom & pan
Annotated screenshot of the redesigned inventory home with callouts: terminology and tab accessibility improved at the top, search ranking adjusted in the middle, and scanning relocated to the bottom tab bar.

Add & details

Old (left) vs. new (right). The old details page mashed chemical identity, safety pictograms, NFPA hazard diamond, and a long list of containers into one scrollable column. The new page splits the work in two — Item Details and Containers — with a counted Containers tab so users know the scope before they jump in, and a persistent Add Container button anchored to the bottom of the screen. Click to zoom & pan
Side-by-side comparison: the old combined details/containers page, next to the new layout with Item Details and Containers split into two tabs and an Add Container button anchored at the bottom.
What changed, annotated: inventory items separated from their containers so each task has a single focus; details page reorganized so the highest‑signal information (CAS, formula, form, hazards) reads at a glance; the Add Container action surfaced as a primary, persistent button. Click to zoom & pan
Annotated screenshot of the redesigned Ethanol details page with callouts about separation of inventory and containers, improved information hierarchy, and the new Add Container button.

Scan

Old (left) vs. new (right). The old scanner gave the user a small frame and no follow‑up affordance. The new scanner gives more of the screen to the camera view and introduces an action bar at the bottom so scanning becomes a continuous activity — not a one‑shot interruption. Click to zoom & pan
Side-by-side comparison: the old scan screen with a small QR frame and no follow-up action, next to the new scan screen with a larger camera area and a View Container action above the frame.
“That’s new [multi‑scan], that’s pretty cool… that actually makes it a lot easier to add a chemical.” — Lab member, usability testing

Where it stands

The redesign moved through multiple rounds of usability testing with lab managers and researchers. The findings shaped the search ranking, the details‑page split, the scanning flow, and the Add Container surfacing. Each iteration was tested against the version it was replacing.

This case study reflects the design work and the testing‑round outcomes — not field metrics from external deployment.

What I took from it

Mobile work for the lab bench has a very narrow tolerance for friction. A user wearing gloves, with one hand on a container, will not tap through a three‑step menu to scan a barcode — they’ll write the stock change on a sticky note and update the system later, if at all. Every extra tap turns into a data‑integrity problem upstream.

The other lesson was about doing research and design in the same loop. The four problems above weren’t hypotheses we’d invented — they came directly out of watching people use the old app. The redesign worked because the testing rounds were tight: change something, put it in front of a real lab user the same week, watch where they got stuck, change it again.

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