Author’s note
Still working through content in this case study.
April 2022 to October 2022
Expanding patient access to discover, book, and manage healthcare appointments
Making improvements to PC Health’s appointment service booking feature
Some screens from the service booking flow.
Team
Client: Loblaw Companies Ltd., Shoppers Drug Mart
Product Managers: Raihan Islam, Maddie Lesaux
Engineering Manager: Victoria Martín
Product Designer: Joe Li
Links
PC Health pharmacy services page
PC Health App Store page
Overview
League partners with Loblaw, a Canadian retailer that operates over 1,800 Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacies across the country, to build the PC Health mobile app. One feature of the app, Service Booking, allows for the booking of medical appointments with healthcare partners to provide access to a range of specialists. I designed on League’s end to work with Loblaw and MedMe stakeholders to integrate MedMe’s pharmacy booking into PC Health. During this project, I:
introduced an entry point to enable the booking of pharmacy appointments in PC Health, enabling Loblaw to realize a revenue opportunity in the PC Health app
introduced functionality for Loblaw to temporarily highlight available services on the PC Health homepage for marketing campaigns
adjusted the entire service booking flow to align with user expectations and be consistent across existing and new healthcare partners, creating flexible intake forms for in-person and online appointments
introduced appointment management flows to allow for in-app rescheduling, cancellations, and adding appointments to personal calendars
introduced patient management flows to streamline the process for booking successive individual appointments and appointments for additional patients.
Context
After working on Design Systems at League, I switched teams to lead design for PC Health’s service booking feature, to identify how the feature could be improved and to support the integration of additional healthcare partners. At the time, service booking had two supported partners (Maple and Lifemark) users could book appointments from, but the existing flow required adjustments to fit in MedMe’s booking requirements.
Problem
A twofold problem existed for the service booking feature that required flow enhancements for:
PC Health as a platform to better support new partner integrations and flexible appointment intake requirements,
and for users to easily discover, book, and manage their appointments.
Pharmacy Services
The initial client ask for this project was to fit in a singular entry point that opened up flow into PC Health to include bookings for flu shots before flu season started in the Fall, as well as a way to highlight and promote providers or services.
Initial delivery
The scope of this project increased however, to include covid-booster vaccines and treatments for minor ailments, following the passing of Canadian legislation that expanded what pharmacists were able to prescribe for. We landed on a dedicated entry point to showcase all available pharmacy services, to showcase what pharmacists had to offer.
Caption
Campaigns
To support promotional messaging for marketing campaigns in PC Health, I explored different options for how we could highlight booking services across the app. We landed on a variety of situation-dependent components Loblaw stakeholders could use and update from a CMS.
Caption
Flexible Intake Forms
After investigating the gaps between the existing PC Health service booking flow and sections unique to MedMe, I collaborated alongside my engineering lead, product managers, and Loblaw to create a flexible user flow that met the needs of the three Healthcare partners. This user flow represented the ideal state of the service booking flow, and was informed by user research, competitor analysis, and integration requirements.
Caption
This also led to the creation of new screens that could be inserted into the service booking flow, dependent on partner needs.
Appointment Management
To align with user expectations and better understand why appointments were being canceled, functionality needed to be added to give users the ability to manage their appointments.
Caption
Patient Management
To streamline the booking process after initial appointments, as well as enable the booking of appointments for dependents, I designed the patient management feature to store patient information for the purpose of pre-filling intake questions.
Caption
Learnings
1. Guide your stakeholders to favourable design decisions 🎯
Powered by League presented an interesting business model I wasn't exposed to before, and working on PC Health and designing for an external client was a great learning experience. It is meaningless to design without considering a company's business and product goals in mind, and understanding how this looks like for the product you’re working on is key.
Caption
2. Design for the big picture 🖼️
I was able to lead a few usability tests during this internship, which reinforced to me that research is incredibly helpful for defending design decisions among stakeholders. As a designer, it is your job to advocate for the user, and this is much easier to do with quantitative and qualitative data at your hand.
Caption
3. Be adaptable 🌊
From news of increased vaccine availability to new legislation affecting the scope of pharmacists, many outside forces influenced the priorities of this project. This made me work in a way that was more reactive, which entailed entailed rapid exploration and iteration with our client and internal product team.
Caption
Reflection
This was the first time I worked closely with an enterprise client, and I think my biggest takeaway was learning how to work under those constraints while advocating for good design. I made it a goal to focus on improving the UX by making it easier to book appointments, and making sure my proposals were made visible to the client. Though I didn’t get to see this project to the finish line, I’m glad my work was able to ship and contributed towards increasing access to care. It looks like Service Booking is a key feature that’s being highlighted in marketing content as well.
Expanding patient access to discover, book, and manage healthcare appointments