Project
Watsons Pharmacy
A mobile app solution to augment Watsons' Pharmacy Services
As one of the top 3 leading retail pharmacies, Watsons aspires to position itself as a champion of preventive care advocate with the aim to be the leading offline and online health and beauty retailer in Asia.
However, Watsons lags behind competitors who have made more substantial progress in the digitalisation of their pharmacy services. The current manual pharmaceutical journey at Watsons is too time consuming and there is a lack of information. This unfavourable position causes loss of customers, which results in loss in potential revenue.
My team and I want to uncover the core user problems and explore more convenient solutions for a seamless pharmaceutical journey at Watsons. This project is not affiliated with Watsons. It is a project done during my UXDI program at General Assembly SG.
Overview
Problem
How might we improve the accessibility of the pharmacy care related services to improve the competitiveness of Watsons and provide a convenient and intuitive pharmaceutical service for users?
Outcome
We created a mobile experience to be integrated with the current Watsons app. We discovered key insights and delivered high fidelity solution to improve and digitalise the pharmaceutical journey at Watsons for accessibility and convenience.
Info
Role
UX Designer
Duration
2 weeks
July 2023
Skills
User Research
User Flows
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Prototyping
Team
Lee Lin Hui
Jacqueline Phua
Solutions
Final designs & prototype
Within the tight timeline of 2 weeks, we focused on creating the solution as an added section on the existing Watsons app. We conducted interviews to find out the exact needs of users, created high-fidelity prototype and conducted usability tests. This project aims to explore more convenient ways to improve the pharmaceutical experience. Here are the designs.
01
Consult preferred pharmacist at their convenience
86% of the interviewees visit community pharmacy for its convenience. They wish to know the availability and outlet of the pharmacists and they wish to ask questions in private without having to queue too long,
1
Browse Pharmacist List: Users can quickly search their preferred pharmacist or filter by availability, services and ratings.
2
Pharmacist Information, Reviews & Outlets: Users can evaluate pharmacist's credentials, locate them by outlets and roster timing.
3
Chat/Call/Video: A more personalised consultation with pharmacist which allows for more privacy vs at the store where other people in the queue can hear the whole conversation.
02
Consult & Cart out recommended medication
After consulting with pharmacist, there will be a consultation summary with medication recommendation. For regulated medication, users' identity are verified using singpass, pharmacist can verify again during the consultation. Users are not issued prescriptions so they won't have the issue of forgetting to bring their prescription when collecting the regulated medication.
1
Consultation Summary: Users are able to review advice & medication recommendation.
2
Cart Out: Users are able to cart out the medication with other general sales item with the option of shipping or self-collect in the store.
3
Delivery or Self Collection: Items gets delivered to the users or they can self collect at a convenient Watsons for urgent needs.
03
Booking of Appointment with Pharmacist
Allowing users to book appointment for online & in person consultation, users save time on queuing.
1
Multiple Access Points: Users have multiple access points on the app to book an appointment.
2
Book Appointment page: Users are able to book an appointment based on pharmacist and their own availability.
3
Upcoming & Past Appointment: Users can view upcoming consultation and access the call there or check past appointment with the consultation summary & medication recommendation.
04
Availability of Regulated Medication
Users seeking regulated medication made many unfruitful trips to various outlet and it is troublesome to call multiple outlets to check the availability of the medication.
1
Browse Medication List: Users can quickly search the required medication.
2
Medication Information & Outlets: Users can understand the required medication better and identify the specific outlet where the medication is available with the information of its opening hours.
05
Tracking of Medication Orders
Rather than to call every other day to know if the medication is ready for collection, users needs an easier way to know if the medication order is ready.
1
Quick Links & Notification: Users are able enter via quick links. They will be also notified when the medication is ready for collection.
2
Processing, Ready, Collected tabs: Users are able to view their past medication when asked for medical history.
3
Prescription Summary: Users can view all prescription info in one page. Users can scan QR Code at the store to collect medication.
06
Quick Question with any Pharmacist
Some users need to ask a quick question with any pharmacist but they don't want to be wasting time queuing.
1
Assign me any Pharmacist: Users have easy access to a pharmacist and can start asking questions immediately. An on-duty pharmacist will be assigned to answer user's queries.
Impact
Impact
The business opportunity for Watsons is by improving its current inaccessible pharmacy service on digital platforms, it will encourage more users to use the service which increases volume of purchase online and offline, which increases revenue for Watsons.
01
Value to Users
Convenience in accessing and utilising pharmacy services
More privacy during consultation.
Save time and effort on repeated calls, queuing.
Reduce wasted trips to physical store for medication collection.
Enhanced pharmaceutical care for every user
02
Opportunity for Watsons
Increase usage of retail pharmacy services
Increase volume of purchase online and offline
Increase capacity and scalability to handle higher patient load to remain competitive
Overall increase in revenue for Watsons
03
Cohesive Collaboration with MOH
In line with the new MOH's Healthier SG to shift care from hospitals to family clinics, community pharmacy like Watsons to efficiently manage population health & reduce healthcare cost. Watsons can encourage more patients to use their services which increases volume of purchases.
"I REALLY like that I can speak to a pharmacist without having to provide my personal number! Amazing!!"
- A satisfied user during usability test
User Research - Interviews
User Interviews
We did up the Research plan and conducted 7 interviews with targeted users within 2 days in order to obtain qualitative information to discover beyond our current observations. The objective is to understand users' experiences and pain points when seeking pharmaceutical care at community pharmacy and to identify areas of improvement to enhance the experience.
7
Users
27 - 62
years old
Video Calls
&
In Person Interviews
Targeted Users
Adults who visit the community pharmacy for
Pharmacist consultation & Medication advice
Supply for Regulated Medications (Prescription & Pharmacy only)
User Research - Understanding Limitations
To gain a deeper understanding of our stakeholders, we interviewed a community pharmacist, Senior Pharmacist WJ, for his insights on the subject matter. He highlighted that there is a general lack of awareness regarding regulated medications and the limitations tied to supplying it.
In Singapore, Therapeutic Products are generally classified into:
User Research - Key Insights
Key Insights from User Interview
Through our conducted interviews and on-site observations, it became evident that there were two distinct groups of users. Although there were areas of overlaps, each user group exhibited unique concerns and pain points which were of different priority.
Users Seeking Pharmacist Consultation
Arranged from the highest impact and frequency
Pharmacist Preference
Prefers to speak with a familiar pharmacist whom they trust in terms of expertise & knowledge.
Does not know if other pharmacists are equally competent and trained.
Queue at Retail Pharmacy
Frustrated by long queue just for a quick question.
"No privacy in discussing my health concerns as others are around."
Availability of Staff & Medication
Frustrated having to call outlet by outlet to check if medication is available.
Unsure of Pharmacists' schedule, it's unavailable online.
Frustrated when wasted trips made.
Personalised Needs
Users seek pharmacists for advice on medications options and personalised health management advice. (eg. Smoking Cessation Program)
Users Seeking Regulated Medication
Arranged from the highest impact and frequency
Availability of Prescription Medication
Frustrated having to call every outlet to check if prescribed medication is available.
"There is no way to quickly check the availability for prescription medications for people who wants to fill their prescription."
Medication Regulation & Statue Limitation
Users will not be able to get the supply if they did not bring their prescription or had an invalid prescription.
Absence of accessible information about the medication regulations.
Collection of Prescription
Required to call to check if ordered medication is ready for collection, no way to track status.
Due to lack of e-records, many users cannot recall what they have taken when asked for medical history.
Long Waiting Time
Long wait to speak to the pharmacist to ask about new medication
Process - Define & Ideation
Persona & User Journey
To better assess and evaluate the research findings, we developed two personas and their respective user journey maps. These tools allowed us to identify the patterns and frustrations, as well as to map out touchpoints that highlight the current pain points and potential opportunities for Watsons.
Process - Define
Problem Statements & HMW
To distill insights and synthesize research data that we gathered, we prioritised and defined the important actionable problem statements to gain clarity on the problems we want to be solving.
Problem #01
Problem #02
Problem #03
Process - Ideation
User Flows & Sketches
After defining the exact problems to solve, we began ideating the different pathways a user could take when interacting with our solution. We defined the possible task flows and sketched out low fidelity wireframes in order to ideate how the interface might look like. This is an iterative process involving the editing of 6 user flows and the sketching of multiple wireframes until they align with the users needs and the intuitiveness of it.
Testing
Usability Test
We conducted usability testing with 5 targeted users, giving them 5 tasks each. To understand how easy is it for users to navigate and complete the task and for us to spot issues. The goal is to make identify the problems of the app and searching for opportunities to improve on the design.
5
Users
5
Tasks
80%
Tasks
Success
The main task assessed are:
Locate specific pharmacist & initiate a chat enquiry
Discover medication key information & stock availability
Discover the types of pharmacy services available
Book consultation appointment
Medication order collection flow
All users completed all tasks within the time goals. Some prompting was required for Task 2 and 5. Generally, users felt the proposed solutions were very helpful and met their needs.
What Users Liked
Convenient & Privacy
"I REALLY like that I can speak to a pharmacist without having to provide my personal number!! Amazing!"
Speak to a pharmacist at a dedicated time, allows for more privacy
Easy Navigation with Quick Links
Easy to navigate and locate Pharmacist, their availability, medications' store availability
"Quick links to appointment very helpful!"
Appointment Booking
Easy to book appointment
"I like that there's a reminder option as well!"
"I like that there is video call option so I still feel there is personal touch despite not being at the store."
Users Feedback
UX & Confusing Copy
“Search store” button name is confusing to the user
Fonts were too small on the Pharmacy Services page.
Lack of information
Lack of explanation on medication regulatory classification, not sure what "Pharmacy Only" &"Prescription Only" mean
Lack of indicating dosage form (eg. tablet/ syrup) is missing from the medication listing name
Unintuitive Flow
Medication collection flow: "processing" tab should come before "ready" tab as users read from left to right
Booking Consultation: Users want to select date before they select time
Iterations
Iterations
Based on the feedback we've got from our usability test. Here are some of the more prominent improvements we added and changed to our solutions. Detailed version of the iteration plan can be found in the full Usability Testing Report.
Medication Details
1
Problem: Lack of dosage form indication
Solution: Add information on dosage form (eg. tablet, syrup, sachet…)
2
Problem: Lack of explanation on medication regulatory classifications
Solution: Add tool-tip to explain key requirements for "Pharmacy Only" or "Prescription Only" medication
Retrospective
Project Takeaway
To develop another app or to build features on existing app?
We had initially considered for our solutions to be build on a new app since it's a non-existing new feature. After some discussions, we ultimately decided to park our solution under the existing app based on the considerations below:
Pros:
Cheaper to add a section than to build a new app
Access to existing user base who are already familiar with Watsons
Cons:
Wanted most features to still be accessible to the public without signing in via Singpass. (Our solutions was to require identity verification only when patient wants to collect/check out regulated medication.)
How can we incorporate the Singpass feature better?
It was brought up on how might we incorporate the Singpass feature so that users might not need to log in so many times to access the medication collection. Our concern is that if they were to use Singpass to sign in, not everybody can access the "ask any pharmacist" feature with just a download of the app.
If given more time, I think this is a great opportunity that could be tested with A/B testing to find out users' preferences for the flow.