Account Creation

This case study covers my role as the Lead Product Designer in redesigning the account creation for Shoppers Drug Mart and PC Health™ Digital Health customers.

At the beginning of the Design phase, I ran a virtual Design Discovery Workshop with my team. The goal of this workshop was to (rapidly) critique the current onboarding flow and create low- to medium-fidelity mockups. Because the business was looking to urgently improve this experience and increase the number of verified accounts, my Design lead and I felt that a focused, fast-paced design sprint would help us launch an MVP sooner.

Coming out of the workshop, I was able to synthesize our ideas into two distinct concepts; a single page flow and a multi-step flow. Even though the team leaned heavily towards breaking down the form into a multi-step flow, I knew that this was a large leap from the existing experience where all of the fields were displayed on a single page. I wanted to be strategic about presenting our ideas and doing a round of testing first so that we could make this decision based on feedback from real customers.

We launched 1 round of Unmoderated User Testing that presented both concepts to 6 customers. By recommendation from our Research team, half of our customers were presented with the single page layout first, while the other half was presented with the multi-step flow first.

After reviewing the testing videos and synthesizing the feedback, I was able to make a more confident decision.

With feedback from our customers and a mobile-first mindset, I chose to move forward with the multi-step flow. Iterating on the designs is one of my favourite parts of the design process. I love seeing how the design evolves over time. It's important that Designers have time to validate our assumptions, refine our ideas, and maintain a continuous cycle of improvement.

Depending on the size of the project I'm working on I will have 1-3 Design Reviews with stakeholders. Each review involves presenting the designs (usually a hybrid model), discussing with stakeholders what's missing or unclear, and sharing out a link to the designs so they can provide more in-depth feedback async. In between each of these reviews, I will refine the design and address their feedback. In addition to sharing the designs, I always share the testing plan and synthesis with the business.

Documenting my designs has always been a critical part of the role. I'm always looking for ways to improve my hand-off file and clearly layout the expected behaviour. Most recently, I addressed a comment from the Software Development Manager to find a way to separate UX annotations from accessibility annotations. This way, it would be easier for the QA team to complete accessibility testing.

My solution was to add a new symbol "A" to indicate accessibility-specific requirements. Since doing this, I've adopted this approach in all of my hand-off files and helped my team do the same.

Since the launch of the MVP experience, the business made the decision to integrate SDM Digital Pharmacy into pchealth.ca. In order to do this, I was asked to update the entire onboarding experience so that it accommodates the necessary requirements to support both new and existing PCH customers and new and existing SDM Digital Pharmacy customers.

Not only did I set out to meet the business requirements, I also wanted to use this initiative as an opportunity to optimize and improve the original MVP experience that we launched. In order to do this I consistently emphasized quality and setting the bar for a best-in-class experience.

Like we did with our MVP experience, I conducted usability testing on the new flows. For these flows, it was important we had a prototype that was interactive. The prototype was built in Figma using the desktop screens.

I was able to put together an unmoderated test plan, set up the screener criteria, and launch the testing within a week. I often find that launching testing on Friday's tends to have very good turnaround over the weekend and we can quickly pick back up the work and start going through the feedback.

The final phase of this project was significant because of the complexity of the business requirements and the user scenarios. The hand-off file had to be clean, easy to navigate, and detailed. Below is a very small sample of the documentation. I'm still in the progress of providing dev support on the implementation of this work but it's been really enjoyable watching the design come to life.

Throughout the implementation phase, I collaborated closely with the development team. This usually looks like a combination of in-person side of desk checks, async or virtual reviews, and formal rounds of QA. I'm often bouncing between Storybook, Google Chrome (dev inspect mode), Gitlab, and JIRA. Over the years I found that reviewing work early and often can lead to better results, less re-work, and reduced time to launch.