One of our first assignments in the pre-work for UXDI7 (General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive #7) was to visit a CVS and observe customer traffic, customer interactions with the store and the overall checkout process.
I did this, spoke to a friend with a recent experience in person, and phoned my mother as well. I figured a little real user research was in order. Sure me walking around is great, but what about talking to someone who would give me some rich, real live experiences. That’s where it’s at.
The first thing I noticed about my store (in Washington DC), was that the flow appeared to be pretty slammed together, small and structured for human grazing, like something fairly industrial in layout. I’m sure some of this is due to limited city space, but it’s also not immediately clear it is designed for humans. There were clearly marked rows of product, which are navigable, but once you walk down and look at what’s on the shelves, you can get lost. It’s just rows and rows, and rows of stuff. You need help.
Here’s a quick real CVS store layout, also publicly available online:
User interview #1, looking for ear drops:
You need ear drops. You look around for ear care, and find nothing. There’s hair care, women’s care, cold and flu, allergy, eye-care, and first-aid, among others. No ear care signage or products that are discoverable. After 15 minutes walking around, you decide that you need help, and you realize that the only person you can speak with is behind the counter and has a line of four people (apparently the self-checkout has replaced some employees, and the pharmacy has a long line). After 5 more minutes in line not to buy something, you speak to someone extremely kind and helpful, and they take you to the ear care section (the very bottom shelf of the eye-care section. Okay. Mission completed, eventually. Luckily, this user told me the person who helped her didn’t make her wait in line for being checked-out.
Problem:
Seems humans are good to have around after all — so maybe this ages-old structure of rows and rows of stuff needs a bit of a human-focused re-think?
My quick and dirty CVS sketch (with some irreverent suggestions):
As anyone can see, these stores are designed for one to come in at one place (generally, not always), flow through the WHOLE STORE, and then out. This is very likely to minimize security risks, and only have to monitor one door and register area.
A better quality picture of general CVS store aisles from the internet:
Solution:
Maybe CVS could look into having Apple-store style hand-held payment devices on in-store consultants that are walking around. Cash, food-program cars and other payment methods can be taken up front, but there are people around to help customers, and check them out double-quick!
User interview #2:
Speaking of user interviews, back to that CVS pharcy drive-thru and doctors office chat with my mom. My mom is the best ever (she’s going to see this). She has looked into an online ordering system or iPhone app, but didn’t really find anything that worked, so she called the Doctor’s office and said she would get the prescriptions from CVS herself, and called CVS to make sure they had it. BOTH said this was all set. She left work early at about 4:00 PM to pickup a very important heart-related drug. Normally it’s a 15–30 minute operation in total. Easy right?
Once at CVS, the drive-thru employee told her it would be about 10 minutes. They were working on it. She said no problem at all. There was nobody else there, behind her, anywhere in the line. The CVS worker came back over the microphone and told her she couldn’t idle there. She said nobody was around, and the car was off. Not to worry. The CVS person became audibly irritated, and said she couldn’t wait in the car. My mom said that she didn’t believe this was an issue. After about 20 minutes in the car and 10 waiting in the store, the pharmacy decided to tell her they didn’t have anything. No prescription (which by the way could be life saving), and she was directed back to the Doctor’s office.
She then called the Doctor’s office as instructed. They said they had sent the prescription over. CVS now said they didn’t have it. The Doctor’s office person was also surprisingly rude, and said “well, if you can make it before 5:00 we can give you some free samples that should work for now”. My mom said, that’s strange, but okay, to feel safe about it, I’ll come there now. “Can you hang out a few minutes in case I hit traffic?” NO. WE CLOSE AT 5:00.
Okay. So, because she was worried about the price of the drug changing at CVS (apparently this is a thing), my mom rushed over to the Doctor, got through traffic, and when she got there, the front-desk person basically threw a paper bag of samples at her. No consultation, nothing. Luckily, she managed to get the dosage right, and was okay for a couple days until she got the real order from CVS.
Problem:
Acquisition of basic drugs took from 3:30–5:30. Two hours, and I’m sure it’s not the only story like this. It involved many phone calls, much frustration, gasoline consumption and miles driven. It was sub-optimal at best.
Solutions:
Apparently CVS has a home delivery system that takes 5–7 business days, but you sometimes aren’t allowed to pre-order far enough in advance to time it right. Clearly, a new system is needed.
Maybe an application and website that’s as simple to use as possible, backed-up by great, easy to access customer service. The issue will be integrating with doctors. Since there are so many “health-systems” in the US, there isn’t any standardization. My doctor has a system to send the prescription instantly to the drug store, but apparently that’s one of the few.
I’ll be following-up on this with some potential solutions and app sketches soon. In the meantime I’ll be sending thoughts of support and kindness to anyone who has to get prescriptions in general, but especially from CVS.
More to come!
