Convenience at Your Doorstep
Order your prescription and have it delivered to your home!
EasyDrugs is an online Canadian pharmacy offering health services and personal shopping from the comfort of home. It connects patients to their local pharmacies to make their complicated medication plans manageable.
I was part of the team that redesigned the patient app to streamline the ordering process.
To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of EasyDrugs.
Product redesign objectives:
To modernize and streamline the company’s prescription-ordering process for the convenience of users
“You can order everything online now. Why do I have to carry my paper prescription from my doctor to the pharmacy and spend 20 to 30 minutes aimlessly walking around the pharmacy waiting for my medication to be ready for pickup?”
During a user interview session, a participant mentioned that they feel like a ‘messenger’ between the doctor and the pharmacy: “You can order everything online now. Why do I have to carry my paper prescription from my doctor to the pharmacy and spend 20 to 30 minutes aimlessly walking around the pharmacy waiting for my medication to be ready for pickup?”
From our initial user interviews, the majority of our participants mentioned that the time they spend waiting in line at the pharmacy is one of the biggest pain points in their current ordering process. Although some clinics send patients' prescriptions through fax, sometimes pharmacists forget to check their inboxes for recent requests.
Users can order their prescriptions and have them delivered wherever they are.
To efficiently connect users to local pharmacies.
Currently, small independent pharmacies cannot compete against larger corporate pharmacies when it comes to technology, putting their business in jeopardy as the world transitions into digital.
To reduce the number of phone calls at pharmacies to improve workflow.
Pharmacies are inundated with phone calls daily, which create many interruptions to an already overloaded workload. Shifting these prescription order calls to online ordering will enhance workflow for pharmacists and provide convenience for patients.
The problem:
Pharmacists process 194 prescriptions per day on average. Due to usability issues of the beta version of the patient-facing mobile app, users are constantly submitting support tickets and disrupting pharmacists’ workflow. Users were struggling to understand what they needed to do to submit a prescription and track their orders, resulting in multiple phone calls and support tickets submitted to the pharmacy.
The challenge:
Make the app self-explanatory to reduce the number of support tickets.
My role:
I led the redesign of the cross-platform mobile app. I conducted user experience research and collaborated with 3 pharmacists, 3 developers, and 1 marketing specialist.
I worked on the redesign initiative from January 2022 to April 2023, when it was officially launched.
The Launch:
Vancouver UX Awards 2023 Finalist
A couple of days before we launched, we received the news that we made it to the top 3 of the Vancouver UX Awards 2023.
The impact
The first month after we launched the redesign, support tickets were reduced by 89.9%
For confidentiality reasons, I have omitted the actual values for this metrics.
The demo
Kickoff:
When I joined EasyDrugs, the beta version of the mobile app had just been released. For every 10 orders, we receive at least 9 app-related inquiries through one of our support channels. I had the advantage of conducting user testing using the beta app to observe how patients are using the mobile app.
For every 10 orders, we receive at least 9 app-related inquiries through one of our support channels.
Initial insights from the user testing:
We conducted moderated user testing with patients. Our goal was to observe the end-to-end process of submitting a prescription all the way to tracking and ordering.
Active user paradox.
When submitting a prescription, it is mandatory to include the patient’s personal health number, address (to match with the closest partner pharmacy), ID, and insurance information. The app was designed to encourage users to complete their profile right after signing up. During user testing, we observed that all of the participants skipped the complete profile flow in order to explore the app.
"I want to explore what I can do with the app first."
Screenshots of EasyDrugs Beta app
Not your typical online shopping.
Unlike ordering items on Amazon where you add items to cart and then check out, ordering your prescription involves more steps. Patients were not sure how to get started. They were not sure whether they needed to take a photo of their prescription or whether a photo of their medication bottle would be enough. They were expecting more explanation about the different steps they needed to go through to have their prescription delivered.
Screenshots of EasyDrugs Beta app
More confusion ensued.
The app was asking patients to make decisions that they don’t typically have to make when they fill their prescriptions in a pharmacy.
Screenshot of EasyDrugs Beta app
Payment process was not clear.
Participants were not sure how to pay for their prescription once it had been verified and added to their cart.
Screenshot of EasyDrugs Beta app
Lack of transparency.
After paying for their prescription, the app didn’t provide any notification whether the payment was successful, and there was no way for them to track their order.
"When I pay real money, I want to know where my package is."
Screenshots of EasyDrugs Beta app
The patient app redesign:
Let's take care of your prescription first.
To highlight EasyDrugs’ value, we prioritized the patient’s main goal: to request a prescription. Instead of asking users to complete their profile after signing up, we redirected them to the home screen where they can start requesting their prescription or exploring the app.
Initial design iteration
Ways to request a prescription
The initial design of our home screen consisted of 2 main calls to action — 1 to fill a prescription and 1 to transfer prescription. We observed during user testing that even with the description, users were not quite sure what transfer prescription means. We learned that there are 3 possible scenarios when a user is ordering a prescription.
They have the physical copy of their prescription.
They only have their old medication bottle.
The prescription is currently with a different pharmacy
We applied these insights into our redesign.
Final home screen design
We will guide you through the process.
Ordering a prescription online is not as straightforward as ordering items on Amazon. We recognized that users needed more guidelines, and we made sure in the design that we help users every step of the way.
Guided profile setup flow
Defaults = less decision-making for you.
Going back to the field study we conducted, we noted the questions that pharmacists would typically ask the patient. For example, we observed that the packaging type would always be “child-proof” unless the patient specifies otherwise.
Prescription details form
We will keep you in the loop.
Actionable items are prominently displayed on the home screen. We made sure that users are informed of the status of their order.
“I have the info about where my order is…”
Click here!
We decided to add a new accent color to provide a visually stronger call to action. During our user testing of the beta app, users were not able to quickly find the call-to-action button because it was blending into the background.
Left image is from the Beta app, right is the home screen redesign
How we got there:
Questions I wanted to answer when we started our design exploration:
How do people currently fill their prescriptions?
How can the EasyDrugs app make the process more efficient?
How are users using the beta app?
User interview
By conducting user interviews, we were able to learn about our users’ current ordering process — such as what they like and don’t like about their current process, what they find time-consuming or unnecessary, and what they think is lacking or needs improvement. We were able to understand where EasyDrugs can seamlessly fit into the users’ process. We learned about their first-hand experiences with their prescription-ordering process, which allowed us to find gaps, pain points, and areas that need improvement. That way, we were able to provide ways to bridge those gaps and make their new ordering process more efficient. With this method, we gained a better understanding of our users’ thought processes when they are ordering prescriptions at the pharmacy and how we can incorporate that model into our product.
User testing - Beta version
At the start of the project, we already had a beta version out in public and had the advantage of using that version for our user testing. We were able to identify the areas in our experience where users got confused in the process. We discovered that users were more keen to understand what the product can do first before being forced to complete their profile.
Competitor analysis
By conducting competitor analysis, we were able to understand how similar products are solving (or not solving) the same problem we are trying to solve.
Prototyping
After understanding the current manual process of our users and observing the issues that they encountered when using the beta app, we were able to identify the problem areas. Prototyping helped us validate our concepts, understand the overall design, as well as estimate the feasibility of our product.
View prototype
We also created a set of illustrations that reflects the new color palette.
User testing
By conducting user testing, we were able to validate our solutions and observe how users navigate the app. We were able to learn which features users adopt, and which ones they ignore. We were able to understand the users’ thought processes when they are using the EasyDrugs prototype and discovered how they expect the experience to be similar to a typical e-commerce product.
