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Enabling A Smoother Checkout

Role: Senior Product Designer
Duration: 2023–2025 (Continuous Development)

We launched an MVP to enable order bundling, allowing patients to consolidate multiple prescriptions into a single shipment. This approach minimized per-order fees and optimized logistics during a critical transition for the digital pharmacy.

RESULTS

A scalable checkout architecture that successfully processed record-breaking prescription volumes while significantly improving NPS through evidence-based UX refinements.

View prototype

Setting the stage

Executive Summary

In early 2021, the Digital Pharmacy team launched a new holistic prescription management system to replace an aging legacy platform. The system, called Harmony, expanded back-end services that enabled the creation of new patient-facing features.

Throughout Harmony's product lifecycle, the checkout experience has undergone incremental enhancements that align with business goals, policy changes and insights from patient feedback and NPS scores. Let’s get into it.

checkout_hero.png

Rx Landing Page | Desktop and Mobile Web

Problem statements & goals

Complex service calls, regulatory restrictions, aging systems, and monolithic technical debt. Those were a few of the challenges facing Harmony. The mission wasn't just to update a UI, but to architect a modern frontend that could communicate seamlessly with a fragmented backend infrastructure without disrupting millions of active patient records.

Fulfillment challenges

Manage store location: In early Harmony, patients found it difficult to change pickup store and pickup time

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Delivery options: Delivery options and their processing times were not always clear

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Bundling barriers: Patients who had multiple Rx ready for pickup could not easily bundle their orders for delivery

Omni-channel Inconsistencies

Platform disparity: Features and user experience differ between the app and web interfaces, potentially causing confusion 

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Guest checkout: Guest patients have a significantly different experience with fewer options for communication status and
fulfillment options

Communication gaps

Emergency closures: Stores that closed unexpectedly, outside of normal business hours did not provide timely or clear notifications to patients.

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Price transparency: Medication costs are not disclosed until after the prescription is filled and ready for pickup, leaving patients unprepared

Why This Matters

Retail pharmacy is one of Walgreens largest total revenue drivers. It is also it’s largest area for growth by market share. At the time of writing, it was estimated that annually over 51% of Americans, 18+ use an online pharmacy to fill their medication. To help drive this growth Walgreens has to continue it’s mission of offering convenient, easy to use digital experiences that meets patients where they are.

"It is estimated that annually over 51% of Americans, 18+ use an online pharmacy to fill their medication."

Pharmacy OKRs

Increase the number of new digital pharmacy accounts.

Drive prescription volume while lowering cost-to-serve.

Increase delivery orders to optimize working capital.

Improve digital pharmacy NPS and overall patient experience.

Design Goals

Emphasize Delivery & Shipping Options

Make delivery and shipping choices highly visible and easy to select.

Improve Status Accuracy & Communication

Provide real-time updates and proactive notifications for every stage.

Ensure Price Transparency

Accurate and upfront pricing to build trust and reduce surprises.

Mobile-First, Omnichannel Design

Prioritize mobile usability while maintaining seamless cross-channel experiences.

Process

As you can imagine this work was not done in a single 2 week sprint. After launching the Harmony MVP in 2022, we continued to refine and enhance the experience based on customer feedback and business priorities. 



For each new feature, my discovery process typically involved:


  • Reviewing customer insights, data, and analytics to understand the problem


  • Consulting prior research and partnering with research stakeholders for context


  • Analyzing competitor solutions to identify opportunities


  • Evaluating the existing experience to uncover gaps and improvements

Discovery & Design

What We Know

A key part of discovery involves building on what we already know. That means leveraging past research to understand patient experience gaps, mental models, and pain points that persisted over time to create new hypotheses and user experience solutions.

Here are a few of the findings from discovery across Order Fulfillment, Price Transparency, and Communication. These recommendations serve as guardrails that shape how we frame problems, helping us stay grounded in what patients consistently struggle with as priorities shift.

High-level recommendations for Order Fulfillment:

research_findings1.png

Mental models from past research say that patients want more flexibility when having their medication fill, this includes more information about the store, fulfillment method and more delivery options. 

Based on a 2024 competitor analysis patients are increasingly finding mismatched expectations between digital and in-store experiences. Long lines, congested drive-thrus and poor customer service were constant trends. This further highlights the need to expand Same Day Rx Delivery service and tracking information.

High-level recommendations for Price Transparency:

research_findings2.png

The following are based on importance for business and customer impact.
 

High level

  1. Surface “estimated vs. final” pricing clearly—early in the journey

  2. Integrate Rx discount options so patients with high copays know they are getting the best value

  3. Offer formulary alternatives with guardrails (savings thresholds, day‑supply match)

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Medium level

  1. Label prices with consumer‑friendly terms (“with insurance”, “after insurance”)

  2. Explain “how we know” the price (procedural vs. substantive transparency)

  3. Design for “price unavailable” states with clear, actionable paths

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Low level

  1. Time‑based automation (run RTBC within set windows pre‑refill/pickup)

  2. Personalize alternative recommendations (align to clinical rules + patient history)

  3. Close the loop with post‑order transparency and archival for compliance/analytics

MVP Design

Review checkout: Before & After

checkout_after.png

After

  1. Flexibility to change promise time window

  2. Clear in-line fulfillment methods for easier decision processing

  3. Same-Day delivery available during order submission, instead of post-Ready

  4. Sections creates content hierarchy for easy scanning

  5. Driver-to-patient instructions for smoother handoffs

checkout_before.png

Before

  1. Tab pattern created low affordance for delivery option.

  2. No ability to change promise time window.

  3. Pre-adjudication price is shown as pending

  4. Same-Day delivery not available until order is Ready for pickup.

  5. High third-party shipping cost

  6. Condensed information hierarchy created high cognitive load.

Price Transparency: Pre-adjudication & Post-adjudication

Before we get a final price 

checkout_pre2.png
checkout_post.png

Prescription Status Communications

Yada yada

Prescription Status.png

Conculsion

By grounding decisions in patient insights, iterative design, and cross-functional collaboration, the Digital Pharmacy team evolved the Harmony checkout experience over time. Rather than a single redesign, improvements were introduced incrementally. With each iteration informed by business priorities, regulatory considerations, and patient feedback.

The result was a clearer, more reliable checkout experience that reduced friction, improved transparency, and better supported how patients manage prescriptions that drove measurable gains in satisfaction, engagement, and fulfillment outcomes.

Refill User Flow

refill_user_flow.png
checkout_before.png

  1. Tab pattern created low affordance for delivery option.

  2. No ability to change promise time window.

  3. Pre-adjudication price is shown as pending

  4. Same-Day delivery not available until order is Ready for pickup.

  5. High third-party shipping cost

  6. Condensed information hierarchy created high cognitive load.

Review checkout: After

checkout_after.png

  1. Flexibility to change promise time window

  2. Clear in-line fulfillment methods for easier decision processing

  3. Same-Day delivery available during order submission, instead of post-Ready

  4. Sections creates content hierarchy for easy scanning

  5. Driver-to-patient instructions for smoother handoffs

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