UI/UX design for a no-code AI-driven scientific hypothesis generation
About the project
About Owkin
Owkin is a biotech company applying AI and federated learning to personalize treatments, accelerate clinical trials, and develop diagnostic tools.
Visit OwkinChallenge
Owkin's vision was to help biologists in pharma, biotech, and academia better formulate and validate scientific hypotheses. For that, they needed an interface that would merge public and private information, AI-driven insights, and data visualizations. Our Merge team was asked to guide product discovery, design an MVP and a scalable UI system, and prepare materials for the product’s release.
What Merge delivered
We completed a full UX exploration and competitor analysis and built a new, scalable design system from scratch. Our team also designed the UX/UI for the web application and provided marketing design support. UX support is still ongoing.
Tech stack
Figma.
Work process
Our team led structured sessions with Owkin’s product owners, biologists, and developers to understand user goals, identify pain points, and align on product priorities.
A detailed journey map highlighted each step biologists take from hypothesis idea to validation. This mapping guided feature prioritization for the MVP.
After analyzing competing solutions to identify missing elements and set benchmarks, we built a feature comparison table to decide which elements to include or improve upon.
Working in weekly sprints, we produced wireframes and high-fidelity mockups for key screens. Then, to ensure consistency in later expansion, a modular design system was built from scratch.
To support Owkin's go-to-market plans, we designed a marketing video, animations, and an interactive demo prototype for an industry conference.
We also created a guided onboarding flow that introduced new users to platform features. Screens showcased recommended prompts, data sources, and visualization options.
At this very moment, we are still working closely with the client’s product and development teams to provide ongoing UX reviews for implemented features.
Helping biologists with big data
There was a core problem we needed to fix. Biologists found it difficult to directly interact with large and varied datasets, and traditional methods either required coding skills or reliance on separate bioinformatics teams.
We designed an interface where they could ask questions in natural language and receive AI-generated insights and visualizations right there. A key design point was transparency in the AI's reasoning that would show users the data sources and methods behind each answer.
Balance in visual design
The main goal and challenge for the design was to avoid looking like competitors with their dense, often intimidating interfaces typical of existing scientific software. It was supposed to be a more approachable and user-friendly experience that would also match Owkin's established identity. Feedback from the client’s marketing team led to incorporating warmer, beige tones and using Owkin's existing font for a clearer connection to the brand.
In conclusion
Outcome
For this project, our team has provided a full UI/UX solution featuring AI-powered chat interfaces, interactive data visualizations, and transparent AI reasoning panels. We were able to translate complex scientific workflows into an approachable platform for non-coding biologists while preserving rigorous data detail. As a result, the users of the platform are satisfied with the interface and are able to focus more on hypothesis testing rather than dealing with technical issues.
Final words
Special thanks to Owkin for seeing Merge as a trusted design partner capable of handling specialized biomedical platforms, and looking forward to more future collaborations.
What our clients say
“Overall, it’s been a great experience. The team’s been super responsive. The speed of implementing the designs in Figma and the speed of responding to our feedback and implementing changes were really good. Pleased with the amount that we got done.”
Winston Chenery, Senior Director of Marketing at Everyday Speech
