A Digital Eye Care Ally
MARLO is a platform that allows patients to place Alcon contact lens order through their eye care professionals (ECPs) and have lenses shipped right to their doorstep.
Product Context
We built and launched a digital-first contact lens ordering platform for our client Alcon - one of the largest contact lens manufacturer - to help eye care professionals (ECPs) retain patient orders in their offices. Through MARLO platform, ECPs can easily create and place contact lens for contact lens wearers and providing them a seamless, end-to-end eye care experience.
​
Product Site: meetmarlo.com
Client: Alcon - One of the largest manufacturers of contact lenses
Product: Web App for Cross-platform Usage
Product launch: 2019
My Role
Apr. 2018 - May. 2019
(13 months)
I played a key product design role who created and defined MARLO UI and UX from beginning to end. From research to MVP, I worked closely with clients, consultants, product managers to conduct user testing, understand user needs, prioritize features, validate product features, deliver testing prototypes. From MVP to market launch, I collaborated with other designers and product managers to build user journey and information architecture, shape user flow and UX, design UI principles, and deliver documentations.
​
Key Deliverables: User Research, User testing, MVP Feature Validation, Wireframe, Journey Map, Sitemap, Product UI and UX, Prototype, UX Construct, Documentation
Challenge
-
For the best user accessibility, the product is developed in a responsive web app to be used on various devices like desktop, tablet, and mobile. Therefore, the designing process involves many design considerations for cross-platform implementation.
-
We built a new business for our client, not just a digital platform. The entire product scope includes portal designs for patients and eye doctors, branding design, packaging/fulfillment design, marketing website design, etc.
-
We validated and built a startup business for contact lens order from scratch to market launch within a tight timeline.
Delivered Product Experience
_____
Eye Care Provider Portal
Through this portal, ECPs can create and prefill contact lens orders for Alcon lens wearing patients. Furthermore, the ECP portal offers functionalities for order tracking/management, trial lens order, and more to assist patient engagement and compliance.
Patient Portal
The patient portal is where patients complete the contact lens orders that their eye doctors have prefilled. The patient portal is designed in tablet and mobile versions for patients to either place orders in the doctor's office or through their mobile anywhere, anytime.
Landing Experience & Packaging Design
MARLO design also includes landing page design for marketing launch and packaging design for fulfillment experience.
Product Video
I delivered this product video as part of the documentation material to present the MARLO features that I helped launch.
Research Process
_____
User Interviews
Find pain points and user needs
During ethnography research, we conducted 33 interviews across eight cities. The process guided us to a place where we thoroughly understood the inefficiencies that patients and ECPs are facing.
Major Pain points
Lock user problems that we need to solve
For Eye Care Practitioners
-
Losing patient initial and re-fill contact lens purchases to online channel
-
Lack of tools for ECPs to engage patient, assist with compliance
For Contact Lens Wearers
-
Non-streamlined prescription-to-purchase experience
-
Require Rx verification for online orders and refills
Market Landscape
Define ourselves in the marketplace
There are plenty of D2C platforms and brokers cutting out an ECPs value to their patients by providing them with convenience and cheap prices to contact lenses. We conducted landscape research and competitor landscape analysis to understand better where we are in the current marketplace to have a direction to land our product proposition and branding strategy. According to the results, we need to keep in mind that patients are getting used to new digital ways of purchasing their lenses and also took note of strong consumer experience brands/services.
Field Visit
Obtain in-Person User Experience
MARLO's product proposition was disrupting the industry to address eye doctors and contact lens wearers' needs by cutting in a unique solution. Therefore we visited eye doctors to experience the current journey of getting a contact lens prescription and placing orders with eye care practitioners.​
"Once millennials go online for price and convenience they aren't going to come back to order from me again."​
​
- Eye Care Practitioner, New York
Ideation & Design
_____
User Journey Map
The synthesized the knowledge we obtained from the different kinds of research about the journey experiences of both eye care participators and patients and mapped an end-to-end lens journey. It organized and shaped the user scenarios that we need to design for.
Brainstorm and Sketch Ideation
Sketch out the initial UX flow - We spent time brainstorming and developing the task flow by discussing eye doctors' and patients' behaviors involved in the user journey, then connecting the two with key interactions. After brainstorms and workshops, we defined the main user flows and steps, and it also underpinned the product MVP feature set.
Exemplar Analysis
Before wireframe, I analyzed a few healthcare ordering/delivering products to learn their ordering and delivering system step by step. I did UX teardown for Capsule and Simple Contacts to shape ideas in building a simplified and optimized ordering flow.
Wireframe
During the design process, I drew sketches and created low-fi wireframes with learned user journeys in mind to build the initial UX flows. The wireframe covered the main MVP features servicing eye doctor's operational needs, including features for setting contact lens price, refilling office trial lens, creating prefilled patient orders, etc.
The wireframe flow of doctor setting contact lense price
Prototype
I elevated the wireframe by adding some UI considerations and built clickable prototypes for testing with doctors. The visual improvement creates a real product feeling for users to avoid ambiguity and lead to better testing results.
Prototype Demo
User Testing
Conducted in New York
We visited five doctor offices and tested with them to get feedback on the prototype. We also asked questions to gather insights around what other features they want to have on the digital platform to complete lens ordering easier and assist their day-to-day work better. The testing results guided the iteration and helped us significantly improved the current UX flows.
Refinement Based on Testing Learnings
A couple of UX issues have been identified during the user testings, and I iterated the design based on testing learnings afterwards. Take the user step of eye care providers refilling trial lenses as an example. Providers have the lens drawers that have been built in a particular layout. It's more straightforward for eye care professionals to fill lens parameters and easier for inventory count if the screen is designed matching with the layout of the physical drawers.
On the refined design, users scroll up to select higher power numbers and scroll down to select lower numbers as how lenses in the drawers were laid out. The UX refinement is for adapting to ECPs current storage conditions and operational habits.
Delivered Final Flow
_____
Key Screens of Eye Care Provider Portal
Key Screens of Patient Portal
UX Construct | Product information architecture
The UX constructs outlined user flows based on features, it's an enhanced information architecture that delivers a visual schematic for the digital portal. The image below shows the UX construct of the inventory feature under the doctor portal. I documented every UX step and information of MARLO platform by building this detailed and inclusive information architecture so that the new startup team can use it as the single source of truth for UX decisions.
UX construct of the doctor inventory
* If you interest in seeing the entire UX construct: Click to view full version
MARLO Style Guide
MARLO Package Experience
MARLO In the Market
_____
99%
ECP practice satisfaction
65%
Eye care practitioners considered MARLO helped them saving time
77%
Patients felt they can now complete their order online
70%
Eye care practitioners felt MARLO simplified their job