Alto drug search redesign - Research & Discovery

PROJECT dETAILS

Role: Design Lead, Project Manager
Project Type: Product strategy, user research, workflow auditing, prototyping, user testing
Timeframe: 3 months to prototype testing (3 months of backend database revamp)

Background

Wunderbar is Alto’s homegrown pharmacy system built in 2016, it is Alto’s internal platform
and technology used by our pharmacists and care teams. Wunderbar fuels Alto’s core pharmacy service from prescription intake through insurance billing, fulfillment and delivery
to our patients.

The Drug Search is an essential touchpoint/user interface in Wunderbar, the search returns
and displays drug information that informs users the following for their tasks at hand:

• Medication Name, Strength & Dosage Form

• Generic equivalents Vs. Brand

• Price to Dispense

• In stock Availability

During the initiation of this project, we had some high level knowledge of the challenge
at hand, but we needed to have a deeper understanding of the current usability pain points and their direct impact on our patients, business and margins. 

In addition, we lack historical data on the usage of the drug search component, this is a lost opportunity to study our dispensing patterns and trends, which can inform future automation
of tasks and algorithms. What we know:

• 65% of mistakes in dispensing originate from intake (data pulled from the month of January 2020)

• Intakers have a high tendency to select a brand option when a generic equivalent is more cost effective for both patient and Alto’s margins

Discovery

I conducted 3 user shadowing session with my engineer partner, in the shadowing sessions we observed our users intaking prescriptions by using the existing drug search.

Research goals defined:

• Gain context and foundational understanding of the current experience using drug search

• Audit and document the current workflow, database structure for ease of stakeholder conversation and engagement 

• Acquire foundational understanding of the drug database structure and it’s technical
  implications on the search experience

• Identify potential opportunities & solutions for improvement

Post shadowing sessions, we invited our users to join us in a working session. In the session, I led the mapping of the workflow, using post-it notes to add additional notes and context.
We also drafted some potential opportunities along the flow:

I then deconstructed the steps in the drug search to understand user’s mental model and decision points at each given interaction. I wanted to classify which drug information is primary and what is secondary. I also wanted to identify If any information leads to users taking other actions or initiate additional workflows outside of the task of intake.

In additional to gaining context around the usage around drug search, it was also critical for me to learn about the foundations of Alto’s drug database. As the database has specific implications on how drug information can be displayed in the search component, there were certain constraints that we may need to account for while designing. Below I visualized and documented what I have learned from the working sessions with my engineer partner, these visualizations helped with stakeholder engagements and discussions.