Major Retail Pharmacy

Pharmacy Experience

Designing flows for complex healthcare relationships

Role: Senior UX Designer
Tools: Figma

Overview

Context

This project focused on designing core account and prescription management experiences for a national retail pharmacy’s digital platform. The goal was to modernize how patients manage prescriptions online — including registering accounts, linking family members, and enabling caregivers to manage medications for dependents.

Healthcare platforms introduce unique design challenges. Beyond usability, every interaction must comply with strict privacy regulations, identity verification requirements, and authorization rules. A simple task — like picking up a prescription for a child — carries legal implications around identity, consent, and protected health information. Our work centered on making these complex requirements understandable for everyday users.

As Senior UX Designer, I led registration flows, dependent and adult account management, pickup authorization, and online pickup interactions. These flows required coordination with legal, security, and internal design stakeholders, with detailed prototypes and documentation reviewed across product, engineering, compliance, and accessibility.

Challenge

What needed to change

Managing prescriptions online often requires navigating complex identity and authorization rules. Each action involves sensitive personal and medical data; the experience must clearly communicate who may see, manage, or pick up prescriptions for whom.

Register a new pharmacy account
Link dependents or children
Add other authorized adults
Manage prescriptions for multiple people
Schedule pharmacy pickup or delivery

Goals

Design principles

1. Simplify high-risk moments — make linking people to accounts, guardianship, account matches, and permissions extremely clear to reduce confusion and counter errors.
2. Design for real family and caregiving structures while maintaining compliance with privacy rules.
3. Document complex system logic so engineering, legal, and accessibility could implement and review behavior consistently.

Chapter 1

Registration and sign-in

New patients need a clear path from first visit to a verified account. The flow moves from sign-in or account creation through email verification to profile details that connect membership and pharmacy records.

Mobile sign-in screen with email and password fields and create account option — Sign in or start account creation

Create account step one with password rules and strength indicator — Credentials and password criteria

Email verification step with code entry — Verify email

Account details form with membership-linked fields — Account details and membership

Chapter 2

Welcome state and optional setup

After a successful registration, the experience confirms what was linked and offers optional tasks (questionnaire, insurance, transfers, payment, and managing others) so patients can complete high-value steps when they are ready.

Success screen confirming pharmacy account created and prescriptions linked — Confirmation after account creation

Additional account setup menu listing optional tasks — Hub for optional follow-up tasks

Add insurance step with upload or manual entry options — Add insurance for a dependent

Chapter 3

Family linking, invitations, and consent

When registering a child, the system might detect an existing record — the experience needed to inform the user, confirm guardianship, link accounts, and surface prescriptions without duplicate accounts.

Managing others depends on explicit consent. These screens show responding to a management request, choosing who to add, collecting information for an adult, and confirming an invite was sent.

Screen asking user to accept or decline a request to manage another person’s prescriptions — Respond to a management request

Choose whether to add a child, adult, or pet — Choose who to add to the account

Form to enter another adult’s information for consent — Collect details to send consent

Confirmation that an invite was sent to the other adult — Invite sent — next steps

Chapter 4

Home, orders list, and status

The dashboard surfaces common actions and active prescriptions. The orders area supports search, filters by delivery type and household member, and a clear split between current and completed orders.

Pharmacy home with welcome message, quick actions, and prescription list — Home — actions and active prescriptions

Orders list with search, filters, and current versus complete sections — Orders — search, filters, and history

Chapter 5

Order tracking across states

Order detail views show progress by fulfillment mode (warehouse pick-up versus delivery), surface issues such as inventory problems alongside healthy orders, and support handoff to tracking when an order ships.

Warehouse pick-up orders in preparing state with one item flagged out of stock — Warehouse pick-up — preparing (with exception)

Orders ready for pick-up with option to change pickup method — Ready for pick-up — alternate fulfillment

Delivery order in preparing state with address and payment — Delivery — in progress

Shipped delivery order with tracking number and status stepper — Delivery — shipped and trackable

Chapter 6

Pickup changes and refill confirmation

When plans change, patients can move eligible prescriptions between locker, same-day delivery, or pay-ahead pickup. A submitted refill request ends with a consolidated confirmation that reflects split fulfillment across multiple people on one account.

Modify pickup methods flow with locker location and prescription selection — Switch to locker pickup

Modify pickup methods with Instacart selected and eligibility called out — Switch to same-day delivery

Modify pickup methods with pay ahead option — Pay ahead for pick-up

Refill request received confirmation with warehouse and delivery groupings — Refill submitted — grouped by fulfillment

Outcomes

Impact

↑ Clearer patient and caregiver registration flows with HIPAA compliance
↑ Scalable framework for managing family members and dependents
↑ Reduced ambiguity around prescription pickup authorization
↑ Established documentation standards for complex interaction flows
↑ Improved collaboration between consulting design team and internal design organization

Although the project timeline shifted due to evolving product priorities, the design work established a strong foundation for future development. The system supports adding children, caregivers, and additional adults while maintaining HIPAA compliance; users can more easily understand who can access or pick up medications. Engineering received structured specifications for accessibility, analytics, and backend logic, with alignment across stakeholders and regulatory requirements.

Reflection

Closing thoughts

Healthcare design forces you to think differently about UX. In most products, design focuses on convenience. In healthcare, it also carries responsibility. Every interaction must balance simplicity for the user, privacy protection, legal compliance, and operational realities inside pharmacies. This project reinforced the importance of designing systems that are both human-centered and regulation-aware. When those two priorities work together, patients gain confidence in managing their care digitally.