Medications on My HealtheVet
Providing United States Veterans with an industry-leading, comprehensive online pharmacy experience.
Designing an online pharmacy experience for Veterans, by Veterans.
BACKGROUND
For years, the My HealtheVet (MHV) product line has served United States Veterans with health management, pharmacy services, and other critical healthcare needs. However, frequent unhappy user feedback and a growing demand for better quality of services meant that the MHV brand needed to be updated and expanded.
I was the lead designer for the MHV Medications team, meaning my duties were to discover pain points in the old designs, iterate on new ones, and acquire Veteran feedback on the new designs with thorough user testing. The project scope changed dramatically shortly after I began acquiring data for MHV Medications. In a department-wide effort to unify the brand of the US Department of Veteran Affairs, the MHV Medications tool (and other services offered under the MHV umbrella) was going to be absorbed by VA.gov. This integration introduced several new teams to the project, demanding organization, clear communication across teams, and processes to decrease churn.
Until the end of my time on the project, I worked closely with other designers from VA.gov, including Content, Information Architecture, and User Researchers. I hosted collaboration syncs frequently across all of the teams working on the Medications tool, now on VA.gov. Weekly updates to business owners and project managers kept the integration and update of the tool moving, and I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish together.
Note 1. Much of this project was accomplished behind a certain level of government security and signed NDA. In an effort to respect such security, limited images are used, and images presented reflect test servers and not real individuals.
Note 2. I left this project after it’s ‘Phase 1’ publication. Current designs and the user experience may be different since I left.
BEFORE INTEGRATION ONTO VA.GOV
The original Medications tool on MHV had never been tested by users and had not been updated in more than 10 years since it’s publication. Below you will see several pain points identified by Veterans on the ‘Refill VA Prescriptions’ page.
As My HealtheVet merged with VA.gov, the modules MHV offered needed updating. Veterans reported trouble managing their medications, finding prescriptions, requesting refills, and more. While work on the Medications module began, similar work started on other services including Medical Records, Appointments, and Secure Messaging. Maintaining a synergy between these products became critical for a satisfactory user experience among Veterans and reflected industry standards of design.
Working with other designers from VA.gov, we decided to use the merge onto VA.gov as an opportunity to rebuild the MHV Medications tool from the ground up, using the same design systems as the other modules mentioned above. First, we needed to decide what kind of experience the Medications tool could offer on VA.gov.
The new Medications tool needed a landing page that worked as both an educational and navigational tool.
2. The new Medications tool on VA.gov would have one page that functions as an active and historical record of a user’s prescription history.
PROBLEMS TO SOLVE:
3. The Medications tool offers a Details page, providing detailed information specific to the selected prescription, accessed via the prescription card on the List view.
THIS PAGE IS CURRENTLY UNDER CONSTRUCTION. STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES.
Duration: December 2022 - ONGOING
Role: MHV designer and researcher
Skills + Tools
Sketch
Slack
Developer handoff
Project management
Creating an identity for the Medications tool in its new home, My HealtheVet on VA.gov
SOLUTION: The new experience has just one page that functions as both a refill/renewal tool and a historical record. All prescriptions recorded by the VA would be organized into cards with specific critical identifiers.
Lo-fidelity examples of the new ‘List View’ page seen on a mobile screen, and an early iteration of the prescription cards seen in a desktop version.
Final designs tested exceedingly well, with Veterans appreciating the efficiency of the new Medications tool and the autonomy it provided.
PRESCRIPTION CARDS: Veteran feedback was critical in our exploration of what elements to have on the prescription cards, which updated according to the status of the prescription.
The original MHV design had confusing navigation that left Veterans searching for prescriptions, unable to track orders, and confused about historical records of their health and prescription histories.
The ‘Refill VA Prescriptions’ page, the most used page on the MHV Medications tool, was poorly designed, with information overload and a lack of visual hierarchy being the main pain points voiced by Veterans.