Suggested Order - Workflow Improvement
01 Overview
The Product
A smart, web-based inventory management solution for pharmacies in the retail, long term care, and acute space.
Core Business Objectives
Minimize customer churn due to product dislike and improve core issues with the new experience before the transition deadline for all customers.
My Role and Interactions with The Team
As the dedicated product designer on this team, I was responsible for performing research to uncover problem areas and create prototypes for testing with real users. Collaboration with the team was required across the whole study. I worked with the product manager to pull existing data, the account management team to solicit users for a usability test, and the development team to define cards and scenarios. Upon completion of the research and testing, I was responsible for presenting our findings with the broader team which, for some, was their first experience with in-depth research of this kind.
02 Discovering the Problem
There was a deadline on transitioning users from the legacy version of the website to the new user experience. Unfortunately, the new user experience that was deemed "MVP" for the mandatory rollover was still missing the necessary features to make switching to the new experience a reasonable ask.
Uncovering why users who voluntarily moved to the new experience were struggling with the switch required digging into our customer feedback log from which we found that…
- There were over 50 comments related to purchasing workflow issues
- The largest issues had not yet been prioritized in the backlog
- All customer personas and pharmacy classes of trade were affected by similar purchasing issues
- 16% of pharamacies converted back to the legacy version due to purchasing workflow issues
Below is a graph created from the themes found in the feedback tracker, you will see that the Suggested Order was a primary contributor.
03 Defining the Root Problem
Once we uncovered that the largest contributor to the problem was the Suggested Order page, we then focused our attention on that page specifically. What did we know already about the issues pertaining to that page? The information available to us from the customer feedback log and the sales pipleline gave us the following insights:
- Users were unable to customize the view of the page that they were working on, impeding them from organizing the page in a way that made the most sense to them.
- Users were frequently forced to leave the page they were on as part of confirmation that an item had been added to their cart, requiring additional clicks to get back to the page they were previously on.
- Customers frequently changed the quantity of the item they wanted while in the cart, not beforehand on the Suggested Order page. Inability to save quantity changes on the page for later, before sending to the cart, slowed down the ideal experience for the user.
- Customers were unable to use the sum total of brand drugs versus generic drugs, which they value for making purchasing decisions.
04 Problem Statement & Solution
The majority of current customers are unwilling to convert to the new experience and 16% of those that had been willing have converted back.
Customers are unwilling to use the new experience due to lack of feature parity with the current experience as well as lack of improvement on known issues with the current experience.
While the new experience may benefit the company in that the product will be decoupled from another more antiquated product, performing a mandatory rollover without addressing major concerns may contribute to the loss of customers over the next fiscal year.
How might we enable users to efficiently review the items the software is suggesting for purchase so that they might reduce their time on task?
05 Defining What Needed Tested
The product manager, development manager, and I created an assumption map to better define the level knowledge and level of importance of aspects that would make the final outcome successful.
06 Designing the Solution
Based on the comparison of the new experience to both the legacy experience and to our competitors recommendation engines, I believe the following features would best benefit our customs.
- Adding the ability to filter on specific columns
- Adding the ability to hide recommendations
- Reflecting price updates based on quantity entered
- Opening detailed drug information in a new tab
- Adding more data on screen
- Updating the table layout to reduce scrolling
- Adding the ability to show/hide columns in a table
- Adding quick access to common filters above the table
- Allowing individual users to save their preferred layout
07 Testing the Solution
Research Plan
- Use GoToMeeting with screenshare to observe interaction with and reactions to the prototype
- Interview 10 current customers (both legacy and new platform users)
- Target customers who have expressed frustrations with the current experience
Research Goal
- Establish patterns between users regarding what they look for on the Suggested Order page
- Determine what is the most important aspect of ordering (pricing, availability, brand vs generic, etc.)
- Determine what parts of the e-commerce site are essential/non-essential
Research Outcome
Using mural to capture feedback from the interviews (show below) I was able to observe patterns in both the users and the feedback on the prototype.
Findings About the User
- Customers that have been using the solution for more than 6 years have an inherent trust in the solution and the business
- Our users are incredibly adaptable
- Our users are typically not digitally proficient
- The majority of participants suffered from change blindness
Actionable Findings About the Experience
- Time on task averages about 50 minutes
- Expectations for operability are not complex asks
- The new experience forced changes in workflow, including adding too many clicks to accomplish simple tasks
Most requested enhancements from the prototype
- More in-depth sorting
- Accessing drug information in a popup
- Having the ability to show and hide columns
My favorite moment
Positive feedback
08 Final Deliverables
Research isn't useful until it is acted upon. I worked to inform the team at large – Marketing, Sales, Account Management – about what we found and about how we were going to prioritize the features/workflow updates the customers liked best. Deliverables and artifacts from this project included…
- Research Plan
- High Fidelity Prototype
- Recorded Interviews
- Research Synthesis Mural Board
- Research Synthesis Powerpoint Deck
- 5 minute highlight reel from the interviews
- Assumption Map
- JIRA cards
Quotes from the team
“I’d just like to state that this was fantastic and you guys did a fantastic job"
-Account Management Manager
“Really really cool hearing directly from the customers and hearing the excitement in their voice."
-Marketing Director
"From my tenure on the … team, this is probably the BEST information I’ve seen come through."
Operations Manager
