The client is a provider of drug and medical device databases that help healthcare professionals to make informed decisions.
For the past four decades, physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and patients have relied on our client’s clinical and descriptive drug databases to choose, dose, prescribe, and use medications. One such database is maintained through an online portal that allows manufacturers to pool information such as drug composition and pricing to make informed decisions.
This portal was more than 15 years old and riddled with challenges that hindered user adoption and engagement. For instance, it did not support users adding multiple entries at once, and users preferred emails over the portal’s in-built communication channel. Frictions also arose from technicalities such as non-standardized data entry (inconsistent use of symbols such as “-“), constraints related to number of characters, lack of information about mandated fields, inability to download pricing reports, and a lack of visibility into the post-submission workflow to check request status.
Driving user adoption and engagement on the portal was a top priority. It was crucial to source timely, relevant drug information from manufacturers to help downstream users with relevant insights. The company turned to Persistent to redesign the portal to make it easier to use, efficient, and scalable.
A portal for modern user experiences
Persistent’s user experience (UX) design experts worked with the client SMEs to understand the business’ vision for the portal. As part of the design thinking process, we started with empathising and understanding the user’s pain points. We conducted user interviews, followed by plotting the as-is journey map.
Based on the journey map, we identified the opportunities to improve the existing process, workflow and the overall user experience. We conducted brainstorming sessions with the stakeholders and SMEs to come up with the design solutions. This interactive prototype improved the overall usability with a cleaner, intuitive, contextual, and personalised user experience.
We began by identifying the most-used portal functionalities and worked to elevate the user experience by reducing redundancies, applying standardization in user inputs and providing guides or how-to information right at the point of need. The Persistent prototype allowed users to upload multiple entries at once and enabled downloadable pricing reports directly from the product page. We created a dashboard for the end users to have real-time information, track progress and status of their submissions, and get important notifications from the company.
To ensure the portal aligns with expectations, we conducted usability testing with real users to assess their experiences and identify improvement areas for further prototype iterations.
Setting a journey toward elevated engagement
The Persistent prototype scored 4.1/5 (out of a 5-point scale) usability score, indicating significant improvements in user experience from the portal’s current configuration. Born out of our user-first, design thinking approach, the prototype is projected to deliver:
- 25% increase in online product and pricing submissions, indicating higher user engagement
- 25% increase in new user sign-ups, indicating improved user adoption
- Optimized workflows with improved task completion, leading to increased effectiveness and efficiency
