BioKnow

Redesigning expert Q&A for biotech insights

Services

UI & UX Design

Company

BioKnow

Industry

Biotech/
Community Platform

Year

2025

BioKnow is a biotech knowledge platform built around real people, subject matter expertise and AI-generated insights across biological drug development.

The Q&A Forum allows biotech professionals to ask questions, share expertise and access AI-supported insights.

At a glance

I redesigned BioKnow’s Q&A Forum across desktop and mobile, improving the UI and UX across feeds, question pages, profiles, search, FAQs and posting flows.
I used familiar community patterns, influenced by platforms like Reddit, to make categories, questions, answers, voting and contribution history easier to use and understand.
I created a more credible and polished experience for biotech professionals to ask technical questions, share expertise and access specialist insight.

Improving the browsing experience

The main Q&A pages were redesigned to make browsing feel clearer and more structured.

The previous design presented the right content, but the hierarchy made it harder to quickly scan questions, categories and engagement. I reworked the feed layout so users could move between all, popular, latest and unanswered questions more easily.

The redesigned post cards give more emphasis to the question title, category, author, timestamp and engagement signals, helping the product feel more like an active expert community rather than a static list of posts.

The main Q&A pages were redesigned to make browsing feel clearer and more structured.

Before and after of the main forum feed, showing how the redesign improved navigation, card hierarchy and category-led browsing.

Improving post pages

The individual post page was redesigned to give each discussion a clearer focal point.

In the previous version, the question, answers, and related content all competed for attention with similar text style and a lack of separation. I reorganised the page so the main question and answer thread were easier to follow, while keeping related questions available as supporting content.

This made the page feel more readable and gave users a clearer path to contribute an answer, review existing responses or continue exploring similar topics.

The individual post page was redesigned to give each discussion a clearer focal point.

This made the page feel more readable and gave users a clearer path to contribute an answer, review existing responses or continue exploring similar topics.

Comparison of the question detail page, showing a clearer reading flow, improved answer hierarchy and stronger supporting content.

Making search more useful

Search was one of the bigger UX improvements in the redesign.

The previous search experience was very basic and did not clearly separate different types of results. I redesigned it so users could search across both questions and answers, then switch between result types depending on what they were looking for.

I also surfaced more context directly in the results, including user names, profile images and categories. This made each result feel less vague and helped users quickly understand who had contributed, what topic it belonged to and whether it was likely to be relevant to their needs.

This was important for BioKnow because users may not always want to ask a new question. Likely, in a lot of cases, they may first want to check whether a similar topic has already been discussed, or find an existing expert response buried inside an answer thread.

By separating questions and answers, and adding stronger contributor and category context, search became more useful as a knowledge discovery tool.

Search was one of the bigger UX improvements in the redesign.

By separating questions and answers, and adding stronger contributor and category context, search became more useful as a knowledge discovery tool.

Comparison of the search experience, showing how key information was surfaced to make existing knowledge easier to find.

Strengthening trust through profiles

Profiles were a key part of the redesign because BioKnow relies on subject matter expertise.

The existing profile pages included useful information such as workplace, credentials, experience and user activity, but the layout made this feel more like account data than professional credibility.

I redesigned profiles to better present the person behind each contribution. Biography, workplace, credentials and contribution history were given clearer structure, making it easier to understand who someone is and why their answers may be trusted.

Profiles were a key part of the redesign because BioKnow relies on subject matter expertise.

Comparison of profiles, showing how credentials, workplace information and post histories were made more prominent and easier to scan.

Improving the post creation flow

The previous version of the Ask a Question popup included the required functionality, but the layout felt basic and the hierarchy did not make the process feel as clear or intentional as it could. I redesigned the popup so users could create a post through a more structured, focused flow.

The updated design gives clearer space to the question field, category selection, image upload, and tags via a multi-select. This helped make the flow feel easier to complete, while still supporting the extra context needed for technical biotech questions with more granular categorisation.

Comparison of the Ask a Question popup, showing clearer field hierarchy and post creation controls.

Designing for mobile

Alongside the desktop redesign, I also created mobile versions of the key Q&A Forum screens.

The mobile designs adapted the same core patterns into a narrower layout, with simplified navigation, stacked content and clearer tap targets.

The aim was to keep the experience consistent across devices while making question browsing, posting and profile viewing feel natural on smaller screens.

Alongside the desktop redesign, I also created mobile versions of the key Q&A Forum screens.

The mobile designs adapted the same core patterns into a narrower layout, with simplified navigation, stacked content and clearer tap targets.

The aim was to keep the experience consistent across devices while making question browsing, posting and profile viewing feel natural on smaller screens.

Mobile designs showing how the redesign was adapted for smaller screens while retaining the same structure and visual language.

Result

The redesign gave BioKnow’s Q&A Forum a more credible, consistent, modern, and scalable product experience.

By keeping the familiar structure of a community Q&A platform and improving the UI across desktop and mobile, the forum became easier to browse, easier to contribute to and better aligned with BioKnow’s specialist biotech audience.

The final designs helped move the Q&A Forum from a functional feature into a more polished part of the wider BioKnow product suite.

See the live product at bioknow.io/qa-forum.

The redesign gave BioKnow’s Q&A Forum a more credible, consistent, modern, and scalable product experience.

By keeping the familiar structure of a community Q&A platform and improving the UI across desktop and mobile, the forum became easier to browse, easier to contribute to and better aligned with BioKnow’s specialist biotech audience.