Bad Retail UX!! I may take my business elsewhere.

The process of ordering a prescription via Walgreens website this afternoon was unusually frustrating. Why? Poor interface design! I wouldn't be quite so irked if this were even remotely close to being an edge-case, but it's not. It happens thousands of times every weekday:

• A patient makes a follow-up visit to a doctor.
• The doctor sends a new electronic prescription for medication(s) the patient is already taking with no change in dosage.
• The pharmacy receives the eRx, fills it, and notifies the patient, but…
• The patient recently picked up a refill of the medication and doesn't need more for a while.
• The filled prescription sits on a shelf at the pharmacy for about a week; then it's restocked.

Also, because I'm offended by Walgreens' assertion that …any message or other communication sent to Walgreen Co. becomes the exclusive intellectual property of Walgreen Co.…, I'm claiming the copyright on the content of my email message to Customer Service for Walgreens website before I hit the send-button by sharing it here.

Online Pharmacy: “On file” Prescriptions Missing from Prescription History

Dear Walgreens Customer Service,

Prescriptions that are ”On file“ do not show up in a customer's prescription history, even when the “Show Hidden Prescriptions?” radio button is set to “Yes.”

In my case, this is particularly problematic as an earlier prescription, from the same doctor for the same medication and dosage—these details are identical—appears with the messages “Refill Due” and “0 refills remaining. If you'd like to refill, we'll call your doctor for you.”

Such poor interface design provides a dreadful user experience for customers. I expect retail websites to make it easier for me to purchase products, not more difficult. Although I have been Walgreens customer for over eight years, I may now considering transferring my prescriptions to CVS or Rite-Aid—both of which have stores closer to my home.

Furthermore, as the line between web-applications and software applications has become increasingly blurred, retail websites have come to set the bar for user experience in their respective sectors. When the retail website for a major national pharmacy chain like Walgreens has set such a low bar for user experience, is it any wonder that so much software in the healthcare sector is difficult to use?

With frustration and great disappointment,
Shelley V. Adams

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Message subject line and content © Shelley V. Adams; licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License. The subject line and content of this message, including this footer, has already been published as part of a post on the author's blog.

I Should Learn to Use a Calendar: On Smartphones, AD/HD & Quality of Life

I hustled into Green Street Church aware that, if I was running late, it was only by a minute or two. The building seemed unusually quiet as I walked inside. A few seconds later, when I reached the room where the Institute for Dismantling Racism's monthly community caucuses begin, I understood why. There was no one there.

My next thought, “This is Thursday, right?” I pulled out my phone and hit its “wake up” button:

11:58

Thursday, July 18

Battery 96%

Yes, it was Thursday, and I was actually a couple minutes early. My next question: “Why am I the only one here?”

…and at this point having a smartphone begins to influence the sequence of events.

Maybe I was in the wrong place. I swiped my finger across the phone's screen to unlock it and tapped the email icon. I scrolled down through a week's worth of subject lines until I saw what I was looking for—Evite Invitation: IDR Community Caucusing—and opened the message.

where:

Green Street Church

The train of thought that followed went something like this:

Okay, I'm in the right place.

…and, yeah, I got the time right so, what the…

[Looking more closely at the phone's screen.]

Thursday, July 25, 2013

…and today is?

[Another finger-swipe—downward from the top edge of the screen—to reveal the phone's “notification area.” with current date]

Thu, Jul 18, 2013

Dangit!!

Hmmm… Maybe I should learn to use a calendar.

Consider what it would've taken to figure this out before I had a smart phone. Forget about looking at the email, and calling wouldn't have been an option. Since I hadn't phoned IDR's office before, the number wouldn't have been in my contact list. I would've needed to go upstairs to the office and—assuming anyone was there at lunchtime—ask if I was mistaken about the day/time/location.

Today, it took less than two minutes to figure out that I'd gotten the date wrong—I was a week early! Furthermore, had I chosen not to write a blog post, no one else need have known about it. For many, this might mean avoiding a minor inconvenience. However, given the frustration and embarrassment that accompanies such mishaps and their frequency for those of us living with AD/HD, this represents a noticeable improvement in quality of life.