Walmart Vision Center iPad App
Product design for a new iOS iPad app to support 15,000 associates and ~6.5 million patients (annually) in the Walmart Vision Centers.
My Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Zoom, Miro
Timeline
6-months
The Challenge
For decades, Walmart Vision Centers have utilized outdated legacy platforms and burdensome paper-based processes which impact the associate and patient experience. To improve patient order times, enhance the associate experience, and realize millions in cost savings, Walmart needed to innovate and embrace new technologies in the Vision Centers.
The Outcome
Through a months-long process of user research, discovery, compliance reviews, stakeholder reviews, and hundreds of design iterations, our team launched the MVP release of a new native iOS iPad app for associates and patients.
This app enables associates to do their work as they move about the Vision Center (no longer tied to a desktop and a filing cabinet) and digitizes critical steps in their workflow, such as managing patient records, handling HIPAA-related legal documents, and enrolling patients in automated text messages about their orders.
Furthermore, this MVP release laid the foundation for many future releases, such as digitizing prescriptions, allocating patient insurance, managing orders, and more.
Business Needs
1.
Reduce the average patient order time to increase throughput and sales.
2.
Cut transactional costs by automating and digitizing current manual processes.
3.
Improve the associate experience by providing modern tools that enable them to work more effectively.
4.
Minimize HIPAA breaches through secure digital record keeping and removing paper-based record retention.
User Research
This technology modernization project would significantly change how Vision Center associates supported patients and went about their daily tasks. With this in mind, we began our project with a series of user research interviews with Vision Center associates to develop empathy for what they loved and hated about their work.
Associate Quotes
💬 “So much of our time is spent on navigating the software. We should be focusing more on patient needs.”
💬 “Our systems make us look incompetent at times instead of like knowledgeable professionals.”
💬 “It's taking forever, and people are just looking at you...we get nervous because people are waiting, and work keeps piling up.”
💬 “Our cabinets are so jammed full of files that they're breaking.”
MVP User Flow
While our North Star vision for the iPad app entails full feature parity with the current legacy platform and enhanced ways of working such as utilizing OCR for automated prescription scanning and intake, our MVP would need to be one small step towards that North Star experience.
We collaborated closely with our product, business, and engineering partners to ensure that our MVP experience could stand independently and deliver value immediately to our associates, patients, and the company.
Below is a snapshot of some of the features that were included in this launch and the HMW statements they aim to address.
Patient Search
➡️ How might we ensure easy access to all the functionality opticians might need when helping a customer?
➡️ How might we drive efficiency when searching for a patient’s profile?
Add Patient
➡️ How might we minimize the number of times opticians need to enter a patient’s personal information?
➡️ How might we ensure data integrity and minimize duplicate records?
Patient Profile
➡️ How might we create a patient profile that will scale to accommodate greater functionality with future releases?
➡️ How might we draw opticians attention to timely actions for them to complete with each patient?
Patient Experience
➡️ How might we accommodate legal requirements while also keeping a simple form for patients to complete?
➡️ How might we allow patient’s to immediately enroll in text updates regarding their orders?
Iterative Design Process
Through a highly collaborative design process, our team, which consisted of myself and two other designers, worked through hundreds of iterations based on constant reviews with key stakeholders.
➡️ We refined our visual designs through weekly design critiques with the Health and Wellness design team.
➡️ We regularly demoed our ever-evolving prototype to our engineering partners to understand the backend implications of our designs and to ensure the feasibility of our plans.
➡️ We researched and connected with designers from other product verticals within Walmart to understand how other teams across the company addressed similar use cases and to find consistent design patterns.
➡️ We attended legal and compliance office hours to ensure our application met specific legal requirements, especially regarding HIPAA.
➡️ We worked closely with our content design colleagues to ensure that our MVP's copy was clear and easily understood by both associates and patients.
➡️ We attended accessibility office hours to incorporate best practices into our design work.
User Testing
Amid our ongoing design reviews and iterations, we conducted a usability research study with 5 Vision Center associates in the field to test our iPad prototype and gain valuable insights from our end users.
Research Findings
Through our usability study, we discovered that many aspects of the designs were easy and intuitive and didn't require any training to understand. However, we also uncovered specific steps or components that caused concern or hesitation for associates that were critical opportunities for us to improve.
We took our findings back to our stakeholders and informed them of how we would plan to evolve our designs to address these learnings.
Iterations
With research insights from user testing, we made design updates throughout our prototype to address critical issues. Below are a few examples of our iterative approach.
➡️ Simplify copy and layout to improve readability
➡️ Simplify the patient profile grid for easier navigation and to minimize scrolling
➡️ Explore quicker ways for an associate to authenticate while still keeping the device HIPAA secure
Continued User Testing & Findings
We conducted an additional round of usability testing with field associates. We found that we had addressed many of the pain points discovered in our first round of testing. Additionally, we uncovered a few small opportunities for improvement and other larger items to keep in mind for future releases.
Final Iterations and Engineering Handoff
We made updates to our designs based on our second round of usability findings and went through several more design reviews and updates to polish the look and feel of the iPad application.
Once we received final leadership approvals, I prepared our source of truth file for our engineering partners. Over the course of this project, we hired many new iOS engineers who weren't familiar with Walmart's design system and components, so we took extra care to annotate in great detail to ensure interactions and design specifications were clearly documented.
Outcomes
The MVP version of this iPad app was rolled out to all 3,000 Walmart Vision Centers by the Spring of 2023, streamlining daily processes for 15,000 associates and reaching 6.5 million patients annually. Since launching, the Vision Center Associate Experience team has continued to build upon this foundation and the app now supports adding prescriptions, looking up insurance benefits, and ordering prescription eyewear.
Below are some of the key success metrics from this initial launch:
1.
Three minutes per patient order saved by beginning the patient lookup or profile creation process on the iPad while the customer is browsing for frames.
2.
Three minutes per patient order saved on back office time spent by the associate by digitizing the signing and collection of HIPAA legal documents.
Additionally, this saves Walmart associates from printing, filing and storing 6.5 million pieces of paper per year.
3.
Since the launch of the new iPad app in all Vision Centers in Q2 of 2023, the Vision Center NPS rose from 72 to 84 showing the impact on the customer experience.