CVS Health · 2022
Making pharmacy experiences easier
People arrived anxious, and the journey to a simple answer took too many wrong turns.
Pharmacies near you
Open until 9 PM
Elm & 4th
Closing soon · 6 PM
Riverside
Closed today
Northgate
Medication
Take one tablet in the morning, with food.
Plain-language summary, clinically reviewed.
Interface recreated for portfolio presentation to protect confidential product information.
My role
Senior UX Designer
Impact
- 25% increase in user satisfaction
Scope
- Research
- Mobile product design
- Accessibility
- Content and interaction design
Timeline
2022 — 2024
The challenge
Healthcare journeys punish uncertainty. People arrived worried and often left with more open questions than answers.
The opportunity
Reduce the journey to the three things people actually needed: where, when, and what it means for me.
What research changed
Anxiety compresses attention
People skipped anything that was not an answer to the worry they arrived with.
Hours are the real content
Pharmacy hours, more than location, decided whether a trip was worth making.
Accessibility is the baseline
Larger type and higher contrast helped every group, not only the intended one.
How it changed
V1
Distance-ranked store list
The nearest location first.
User signal
Nearest was often useless
A closed pharmacy two minutes away lost to an open one fifteen minutes away.
Final
Status-first answer card
Open, closing soon or closed, stated before anything else.
Constraints we designed around
Accessibility requirement
AA contrast, dynamic type and complete screen-reader flows were treated as requirements, not enhancements.
Legacy-system dependency
Store and pharmacy data came from systems the product could not change, so the design had to handle incomplete records calmly.
Decisions
Decision 01
Lead with time and status, then distance.
- Rank by distance
- Rank by open status
- Let people choose the sort
Options considered
- What changed my mind
- People described the goal as 'somewhere I can actually go now', not 'the closest one'.
- Why
- The decision people were making was about the trip, not the map.
- Tradeoff
- It contradicts the familiar map convention, so the ordering needed to be explained in the interface.
Decision 02
Plain-language medication detail, without losing accuracy.
- Keep clinical language
- Rewrite in plain language
Options considered
- What changed my mind
- Clinical phrasing was accurate and still left people unsure what to do next.
- Why
- In healthcare, clarity is part of care.
- Tradeoff
- Every content change required review, which slowed release cycles.
Where it landed
Status-first store cards
The state of the pharmacy is the headline.
Plain-language medication detail
Clinical information translated without losing accuracy.
Accessible by construction
Contrast, dynamic type and screen-reader flows built in from the first spec.
Pharmacies near you
Open until 9 PM
Elm & 4th
Closing soon · 6 PM
Riverside
Closed today
Northgate
Medication
Take one tablet in the morning, with food.
Plain-language summary, clinically reviewed.
How might we
How might we answer a person's real question before they have to phrase it?
Outcome
25%
Increase in user satisfaction
What I took from it
In healthcare, clarity is care. Removing a sentence often did more for satisfaction than adding a feature.
Next project
Apple
Simplifying global artist administration