Adhith SundaramSenior product designer

Sam's Club - Walmart · Shipped 2024

Cutting a pharmacy delivery order from 15 minutes to 7

157min

Average associate checkout time per delivery order

40%

Of fulfillment tasks automated

The Rx One home screen on the mobile app: 22 fills due within 30 minutes with a Start filling button, then the RxToGo orders, Return to Stock, Cycle Counts and Log Copy queues.
The web portal's review order screen for a delivery order: the prescription list with patient, quantity, pay and Rx status, and the order total alongside.

Role

Senior UX Designer

Timeline

Q2 2024 - Q4 2024

Team

15 engineers, 1 product owner

Overview

Half a million Sam's Club members rely on prescription delivery, but fulfilling these orders forced pharmacy associates to juggle multiple disjointed systems - Connexus, a third-party scheduler, and the POS - often with a customer waiting on the phone.

To solve this, I designed RxToGo, a consolidated web portal and companion mobile app that allows associates to seamlessly receive, validate, bag, and dispatch orders. As the sole product designer from discovery to launch, I drove the end-to-end UX strategy in close collaboration with engineering, product, business, and operations teams.

The problem

Fulfilling a delivery order meant navigating three separate systems and physically pacing across half the pharmacy. Associates had to cross-reference dense patient data in Connexus (where accuracy is non-negotiable), process payments in POS, and schedule drivers in GoLocal - all while managing a desk, scanner, printer, and phone.

Associates described the process as tedious, and said it delayed the customers standing at the storefront.

The in-store fulfillment journey

Through my research, I mapped the current-state journey for a Sam's Club pharmacy technician, from creating the order to dropping the envelope in the pickup bin.

100%

Drag around to move, zoom, or expand it to view in full screen.

My research observations

Connexus spread critical prescription details across multiple screens, requiring a heavy, high-stakes audit before any action could be taken. On high-stakes medical data where mistakes are unacceptable, this scattered layout dramatically increased cognitive load and processing time.

Associates were forced into constant context switching across Connexus, the POS, and GoLocal. Performing this multi-system shuffle while holding a customer on the phone created severe cognitive overload and slowed fulfillment.

After taking payment, associates had to jump to GoLocal to manually re-enter and schedule a delivery time. Running scheduling entirely separate from checkout added friction and duplicated effort.

Completing an order meant jumping to a new screen at every phase: starting, labeling, paying, scheduling, and packing.

Associates constantly shuffled between desk and staging, managing fragmented printers, scanners, phones, and PCs.

The constraint

With fixed legacy tools and POS hardware owned by another team, I designed around these tech constraints to cut unnecessary system touchpoints.

Connexus: the legacy platform

Connexus displayed every order; the red CTA in the top-right corner is the entry point for the delivery order flow.

The Connexus patient counseling screen: a Windows application with a workflow rail down the left side, order and prescription panels in the centre, and patient, allergy and DUR panels on the right. A red Delivery Orders button sits in the top right of the toolbar.
The Connexus patient counseling screen: a Windows application with a workflow rail down the left side, order and prescription panels in the centre, and patient, allergy and DUR panels on the right. A red Delivery Orders button sits in the top right of the toolbar.

I recreated Connexus for representation purposes; it does not contain any sensitive information.

The engineering team couldn't modify Connexus, but severe fulfillment friction based on research drove team alignment on my strategy of reducing system touchpoints.

Exploration

I originally proposed a new scanning app concept aligned with Sam's Club's suite of products, but we pivoted to adapting an existing Walmart fulfillment app for the following reasons:

Checkout app with Sam's Club DLS

I simplified prescription lists, payment, and printing into a streamlined, minimal checkout flow.

Order list: today’s overdue and due-soon delivery orders Scan Rx: the selected order with each prescription not yet scanned Barcode scanner framing a prescription vial Scan Rx: every prescription marked scanned, with Process payment enabled Payment approved, with a Print label and pack button Print and pack: Rx documentation and delivery label printed Order complete, with a Start a new order button

The solution

I used one design language across two surfaces: a web portal for managing orders and a mobile app for floor checkout.

Connecting the experience

From my initial observations, I made sure the web portal had a clear information architecture, and the steps that used to span Connexus, POS and GoLocal collapsed into one linear flow.

The order queue in the browser: delivery orders with patient name, prescription count, total, order status, bag and origination.
Review order for Ana Jones, scrolling from the prescription list through delivery address, payment and schedule.

Order Maintenance - Web portal

Prescription list exploration

Iterations made from BlueSteel to Walmart pattern, focused on cards with prescription, patient, and fulfillment metadata.

  1. Iteration 1: Pending and Completed tabs over a flat list of ten orders, each row giving the patient, the delivery item count and a Ready by time. Iteration 1
  2. Iteration 2: the list split by due date into Today, Tomorrow and Next day, with an Overdue flag on the late order. Iteration 2
  3. Iteration 3: the same day filters under a Ready by label, with the Overdue flag dropped and the prescription count set back. Iteration 3
  4. Iteration 4: Today and Future filters, a Delivery or Pickup tab down each row's left edge, a Due soon pill and a payment declined warning. Iteration 4
  5. Final design: Delivery and Counter tabs colour coded down each row, and the due time read as Complete by. Final design

Scanning interaction

Based on heuristic evaluation, the scanning behavior was changed to guide users with prompt scanning message and also accessible colors with right icon indicators.

  1. Before: the scan screen shows a drawing of a Will Call bag inside framing corners, the instruction Scan a Will Call bag, and a Manual entry button. Before
  2. After: the live camera view with framing corners over the bag label, prompting Scan Will Call Bag PU 1600, which names the bag to look for. After
  1. Before: the three scanned prescriptions sit on saturated green rows in white text, under the heading All 3 Rx's have been scanned. Before
  2. After: the same three sit on white rows, each with a green check mark and the word Scanned, under a purple bag indicator reading PU 1600 Day number 2. After

Shipped flows

The mobile app's screens laid out together: the RxToGo checkout queue and its empty state, scanning and confirming each Rx, the go-back confirmation, split order, counter pickup, print and pack with its counsel note, payment and printer failures, typing a bag number that is already in use, the scanner empty state and manual entry, settings with the assigned store and printers, and the Rx One home screen.

Move cursor around image to view more screens

A reusable design system

I built the design system for RxToGo from scratch; the portal’s tokenized UI was launched in BlueSteel DLS, which was used for future internal web tools.

The BlueSteel DLS sheet: Rx status chips, primary and secondary CTA buttons in every state, ghost text links, date and time swatches, checkboxes and radio buttons, an information banner, card art, text inputs, toast messages, a side sheet, a loading spinner, and the search bar through rest, hover, typing, expanded and active.

Impact

The order management and mobile checkout were shown at the Health & Wellness quarterly product event.

800+

Delivery orders fulfilled through RxToGo

6

Pilot states at launch

In pre-pilot tests (n=8), I found that associates favored the portal to cut clicks and GoLocal friction, and used the mobile checkout app on the floor seamlessly.

Reflection

Constraints can drive new business opportunities

I respected the engineering pushback and used it as a foundation to develop new ideas. Embracing this limitation allowed my work to branch into different business opportunities in order fulfillment while saving engineering costs.

Looking back reveals opportunities for a unified experience

If I were to rethink the delivered product today, I see the value in a more holistic approach. I would like to combine the grocery + pet pharmacy order fulfillment experiences to create a more seamless journey.

Check out more of my work
Item Management Allocatr Mise