Challenge

Our client wanted to offer their in-store pharmacy offerings in their existing iOS and Android mobile application. The application was geared towards the in-store shopping experience - creating shopping lists, browsing and saving coupons, and managing rewards. There were a few specific challenges that our cross-functional team had to work through:

1. Clear information architecture - The existing app already several different features and felt disjointed. The new pharmacy section would add complexity and data-rich content to the already large application. We had to ensure the product features felt cohesive and customers were able to find what they needed quickly.

2. Consistent visual & interaction design - The pharmacy features introduced several new visual and interaction design patterns. We wanted to utilize the existing component library as much as possible but quickly realized that the pharmacy section required new patterns. The challenge was ensuring these new patterns looked and acted like the rest of the app.

Process

The following processes and team set up enabled us to design and build the pharmacy features while solving for the primary challenges above:

Cross-functional product team
This was my first time working within a product team with iOS and Android developers, quality assurance (QA) engineers, business analysts, project managers, and the client. We sat together and were in constant communication - the photo above is non-staged example of how we often worked. I made very few design decisions without collaborating with a developer and vice versa.

Agile product development framework
We adopted a flexible agile framework that kept us focused on one feature or a set of smaller features at a time while allowing for iteration later on if needed.

Existing product knowledge
While I joined the project for the pharmacy release, the developers and QA engineers on my team worked on the initial release of the app. Their in-depth knowledge of the application was essential in working through the challenges in a more efficient way. If I shared designs that were inconsistent with the rest of the app, they would tell me and we’d work together to find a new solution.

Shared customer focus
In the past, I was the only member of a team who consistently kept the end user in mind. On this product team, we worked so collaboratively that we were all acting as designers and stayed focused on the customer needs.

Outcome

The updated app was successfully released and is now being used by customers. The pharmacy features met the needs of customers while also fulfilling the client’s business goals. Due to our agile framework and collaborative working methods, we were able to integrate the pharmacy features while maintaining a clear information architecture and consistency across visual and interaction design patterns.

Looking ahead

In this story, the outcome isn’t a result of my individual success but rather the success of a team that was intentional in our relationships and processes. This project changed the way I look at product teams and I’ve applied many of these learnings to my current teams.