In the past, members of the online pharmacy website faced a cumbersome experience navigating multiple steps to manage their prescriptions online. Recognizing the need for improvements, the business soft launched a minimum viable product (MVP) that consolidated prescription information for 10% of the user population, roughly 6 million people. The MVP received an overwhelming positive reception for consolidating prescriptions into a single view, eliminating frustrations of a fragmented web experience.
"Love the updated site. I can now go to one page to see all my active medications. This can be printed and presented to a new doctor. Thank you!"
While the MVP was undeniably valuable, there were performance setbacks that couldn't be ignored. User feedback highlighted product limitations and a strong demand for additional features. Data also revealed where it failed. Key refill and renewal metrics, which had previously performed better, had declined to an unacceptable degree. The team saw this as a "fatal flaw" to prioritize and address before scaling the product with more features for tens of millions of more people.
The risk of not addressing these problems meant continued confusion, frustration, and inaccessibility among people who relied on the digital pharmacy service for prescription refills, plus a negative impact and cost to business and healthcare outcomes.
For added context, in 2021, out of 21 million prescription fills initiated by patients, 17 million of those fills were initiated digitally (82%), which was a striking perspective of how dependent people were on digital tools to get the medications they needed, especially as there were over 60 million eligible digital pharmacy users.
Reviewing user feedback and MVP performance metrics informed business and development prioritization and a clear direction on where I needed to put my focus, in two parts:
"How might we better guide users to complete their refill and renewal tasks, leading to higher conversion rates and better medication adherence?"
Before diving into any solutions, I looked at the current state of the MVP, focusing on refill and renewal use cases to understand the user experience and how those capabilities and metrics fell short. Upon review, I had an idea why. It became understandable why someone might misperceive the design intentions of what and how content was presented.
Current state analysis helped my content partner and I team up to tackle the problems around refill and renewal content experiences. Driven by evidence, I had reasons to believe why these enhancements would result in more favorable outcomes.
"How might we help users better manage their prescription lists, ensuring that the experience is more useful and customizable for their needs?"
The digital medicine cabinet minimum viable product (MVP) was a winning concept and product for users, eliminating the need and labor to navigate to four different places across the web to complete a prescription level task. However, the MVP was just that - minimal and also limited. There was plenty of feedback expressing demands for more features to better navigate and manage prescriptions lists.
"I now see my entire family which makes it more difficult when trying to find prescriptions that I want to refill for just myself."
"You still list a script ready for refill I no longer use. But I don't see a way to delete it. It's been a year since I used it."
The customer feedback I encountered and collected focused largely on challenges with finding and managing prescription information. For comparison and also inspiration, I evaluated major e-commerce sites. I was curious about what competitors were doing that we were not. What I immediately discovered were common features and patterns across every competitor site I visited. I found across the board that effective product discovery relied on Search, Filter, Sort, and Categories of similar information. Features were also consistently placed in side panels, horizontal bars, or modals for intuitive navigation.
Evaluating competitor sites inspired multiple wireframes based on e-commerce conventions and patterns. After review and alignment with stakeholders, I narrowed down design concepts and explorations to two for usability research, focusing on Search, Filter, Sorting, and Archiving. My research partner and I planned a moderated usability test to learn and understand feature desirability, usefulness, and usability.
A 70% majority of participants had no strong preference between design layouts A and B, while 30% favored B for its clear display of prescriptions alongside tools. For new features (Search, Sort, Filter, and Archive), participants expressed an overall neutral stance, recognizing their usefulness when needed. A few highlights:
Leveraging research insights, I designed an experience with familiar tools that gave users greater confidence and control to seamlessly manage prescriptions in their digital medicine cabinet, ensuring adoption and meaningful engagement. Here's what 60 million digitally eligible users of the pharmacy had access to:
The predictive search tool dynamically corresponded to a string of letters or prescription numbers entered by users, making it quick and effortless to narrow down or pinpoint medications within their prescription lists.
The "Filter by Member" and "Sort" features let users tailor their prescription lists, making it easier to manage medications for themselves or their family members. Users could now filter by a member and sort by relevance, alphabetical order, or recent orders to suit their needs and preferences.
Category filters grouped similar prescription types like refills and renewals for quick and effortless selection. Plus, it enabled discoverability of plan-recommended benefits and opportunities for cost savings and convenience home delivery options.
Archiving and unarchiving was a highly requested feature among users. It allowed people to organize their prescription list and focus on medications that mattered most to them and store away irrelevant ones.
After the MVP updates and new feature enhancements, the digital medicine cabinet remained as the most visited experience in the digital pharmacy, reinforcing its value for users and the business.
Fast follow refill and renewal enhancements influenced positive trends, outperforming initial MVP metrics with a respective 5.2% increase in refills, and 3.9% increase in renewals. There was also a 20% drop in call volume into the call center specifically about refills and renewals, suggesting better self-service experiences and digital task completion among users, adding higher confidence for the business to roll out the MVP to 100% of the user population.
The new feature enhancements I delivered such as Search, Filter, Sort, and Archive had varied utilization rates. Among them, Filter and Archive were most popular likely due to higher demands for them. Overall, these tools improved discoverability, streamlined navigation, and contributed to better prescription management, leading to a better self-service experience for users and contributing to drive up every core metric.
"Thank you for adding the ability to filter by member!"
"I didn't like the site the last time I got on. I don't remember why, just confusing is all I remember. Had no problems this time getting to my refills and understanding the ordering of them."