CVS Pharmacy Smoking Cessation
Overview
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CVS Pharmacy Smoking Cessation is a program that allows smokers to start their quit journey with a CVS Pharmacist, and we had to design the marketing page and registration process
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As the project lead, I collaborated with another UX designer (Stephanie Amaral), researcher (Laura Paradis), accessibility designer (Charles Hall), and content strategist (Mitch Krpata) to create a marketing page and registration process for a smoking cessation program
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We collaborated with two product managers (Jiten Mehta and Meena Ramamoorthy) and engineering team, as well as adjusted our design process to account for multiple mid-sprint requests coming from the business
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Through user interviews, information architecture, wireframing, and testing, we were able to launch the marketing site and registration process
Skills
Product Design Strategy, Workload Management & Planning, User Research, User Interviews, Competitive Analysis, User Flows, Information Architecture, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Testing, Visual Design, Persuasion, Presenting
Time Frame
Five 2-week sprints (September - November 2021)
Role
UX Project Lead; planning and leading work for a team including a UX designer, researcher, accessibility designer, and content strategist
Outcome
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We designed, tested, and delivered the new Smoking Cessation health service landing page and registration within our timeline
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CVS successfully launched the pilot of the CVS Pharmacy Smoking Cessation program to a few states in the US
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This had a huge impact, because people can sign up for 6-months worth of consultations with a CVS Pharmacist to quit smoking cigarettes and vapes
Problem
We need to convince people who smoke to start their quit journey with CVS, and allow them to register as easily as possible
Everyone knows that smoking is bad for them. We just needed to learn what would convince them to sign up for a service that could truly help them quit.
The other problem we had was that our legal partners had a questionnaire of around 60 questions for the registration process. So we needed to push back to understand which questions were actually necessary for the Pharmacist to know, and which ones we could combine.
Planning for a very tight deadline
Mapping out our tasks for each feature and negotiating with product
We only had 10 weeks to design this product from scratch, without research or full business requirements.
I collaborated with the product team to understand the features that were needed for MVP (marketing page, registration experience, notifications). When quarterly planning came up, I got my team together to understand what tasks would need to be completed by each of us to design each feature.
For each feature, we listed the tasks we needed to complete, and spread them out across the 5 sprints we had. I led these discussions and make sure to meet back with product to communicate any overload we had. We had to adjust the delivery date of a few designs, but everything would get completed in time.
Research
What have people's journeys been like trying to quit, what worked, and what didn't work?
I worked with Laura Paradis to come up with questions and take notes for our user interviews to understand people who had tried to quit smoking before. People were very vulnerable, and it was interesting to learn:
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The ritual was almost harder to quit than the nicotine itself (ie. always have a cigarette with my morning coffee, I need something in my hand while waiting outside, etc.)
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People felt that their doctor would judge them or make them feel shameful, so they wouldn't bring it up
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Quitting because of a life goal (ie. new baby in family, running a 5K, walking daughter down the aisle, etc.) was much more effective than just quitting for a health-related goal (ie. to just get healthier)
This information would help inform our marketing page for the program to help convince people to sign up. It also gave insight into which questions were important to ask in our questionnaire.
User flow
People could sign up for the program at a CVS or at home online
Whether someone talked to a CVS Pharmacist in-store and was interested in the program, or they were browsing the web for smoking cessation programs, they needed to register online.
As we mapped out the flow, we learned that we would need an "eligibility" page which would make sure we filter out people who the program wasn't available to (out of state, under 18, or using Medicare), but could also be used to determine whether they were in-store or online which would determine paths later in the flow.
Information architecture & registration questions
After user interviews, we negotiated with legal on which questions were necessary
We learned in our user interviews what may actually impact someone who smokes to continue smoking, and met with our legal and clinical partners to understand what was purely for data, and what would inform the pharmacist to best treat the patient.
We reduced the number of questions in the questionnaire. Steph and I looked at the information architecture and decided to have three pages for registration (reducing the cognitive load of having them all on one page):
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Tell us about yourself (basic demographic info)
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Your smoking history (questions on how many cigarettes in a day, how smoking is tied to their daily habits, other medical history)
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Consents and payment (program consents and card number to be charged after first visit)
In each usability test, we improved how we gave people an indication of how much work was left when registering (step number and labeling "continue" buttons with more information).
Wireframing, draft content, and usability testing
We tested as often as possible with people who were current or former smokers
With our basic draft content written by Mitch (with little information given from the business to product), Steph and I tested our marketing page and registration screens with Laura to get initial reactions.
In the first round of testing, we used the minimal information we had to get initial reactions to the program. We learned that we needed to reassure that pharmacists were getting certified for this smoking cessation program, because we didn't have enough information on that.
We did a second test after including the eligibility questions and pharmacist information, and learned that we needed to move the initial date of birth and state questions to the eligibility page. It was distracting from the landing page content and taking up too much room.
In a later test, people asked more about how the program would work, how long it would take while filling out the forms, how they could schedule calls (which later informed our "How it works" and "FAQ" sections, along with indicating progress of form completion).
We also tested how we indicate the patient's progress for filling out the form. In our initial tests, we included "Section x of x" under each heading, but participants wondered how long it would take.
We tested 3 versions:
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Listing "Page x of x" at the top to indicate how many pages were in the form
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Listing the page titles and bolding the current page
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Giving an overview page first to set expectations, and then testing the control to see if there were different reactions
We also tested a variation of button copy to say "Next: page title" so patients had better expectations of what would come next.
Participants preferred the first test option with "Page x of x," because they rated the form as faster to fill out, and with the new button copy, they were able to tell us exactly what they would expect to fill out next. We were surprised that the other test options rated lower, but adding more information about progress indication only increased the amount of stress participants had.
A breakthrough with our last round of testing
As the sprints went on, Steph and Mitch had put together a second of the marketing page that really hit home with people who specifically have not tried to quit yet.
When they understood that they could tie their quit journey to a specific life goal (ie. new baby in the family, running a 5K, etc.) we started getting questions on when the program would be available and how soon they could sign up!
Steph, Laura, Mitch, and I also found that the "How it works" section was clear enough for people to sign up.
Steph and I also worked on many iterations for how to indicate registration progress, and found the clearest way was to use labels "Page 1 of 3" and use the next page's name on the continue buttons (ie. "Continue to smoking history").
Fixing a problem with our design process: Mid-sprint requests from business
Setting up a new process with product and development
Throughout the five 2-week sprints, the business continued to trickle down new information about the program:
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The number of states that would have the pilot kept decreasing
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The price of the consultations changed
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The details on the program kept changing (how often the pharmacist would call, if the patient could schedule future calls themselves, etc.)
At this time, we had a tight deadline and little control over the changing information. We felt we had to say "Yes" to every change and would try to squeeze it into the sprint, but that started becoming unmanageable.
I set up a new process with product (Jiten and Meena) to get us to first note the mid-sprint requests that were coming in, and prioritize them before immediately saying "Yes."
This made the work for both me and Steph much more manageable. There were some simplifications that needed to be made in order to meet the deadline, like simplifying the "How it works" section to just text for now, and not condensing the long text of acknowledgements at the end. This ended up saving us time.
Final designs and launch
We successfully launched the CVS Pharmacy Smoking Cessation program in Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee. The program will continue to expand to more states, and we will have more pharmacy-related service projects coming down the pipeline.
If you're interested in something I've worked on outside of marketing pages and registration, take a look at how I took our Wayfair enterprise design system and worked with design teams to rebrand our applications.