Overview
I worked with 3 other designers at the UCSD Design Lab to design a brand new in-app shop feature for the Dexcom G6 app to simplify and improve shopping experience for users as part of the Diabetes Design Initiative. We worked with Dexcom mentors and G6 users weekly to identify main pain points of their shopping experience with Dexcom.
Context
10 weeks (Oct - Dec 2020)
Role
Product Designer
Protype Lead
Background
Dexcom is a company that develops, manufactures, and distributes Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) systems to help those with diabetes track and manage their glucose levels. CGM users need to constantly purchase and replace their medical devices every so often which creates the opportunity for an in-app shop feature to potentially take flight.
G6 app users can view and manage their glucose levels, trends and data with just a quick glance at their smart device or receiver. They will also receive alerts when their glucose levels are becoming too high or too low and then are able to share this data with up to 10 followers.
As Shown: CGM system on the left and G6 mobile app on the right
The Problem Space
We were challenged to design a new way to simplify the shopping experience for Canadian users. Currently, users who are not on subscription plans can only repurchase items through the online shop through a web browser making the shopping process quite inconvenient according to Dexcom shoppers and users.
The current online shop for Canadian users
So then...
How might we create a straightforward and transparent shopping experience to increase sales and customer loyalty?
The Process
User Research + Pain Points
To better understand Dexcom and their users, I joined several Dexcom Facebook groups and read countless posts to gather general feedback on peoples' shopping experiences, read Appstore reviews, and reviewed the current shopping website in order to pinpoint user pain points.
In this stage, we realized that there is a difference in the insurance system between Canada and the U.S. where Dexcom US users must purchase through insurance companies. This finding allowed our mentors to orient the targeted users of the project to Canadian markets first.
We performed 7 qualitative interviews to understand the users’ mental model of shopping with Dexcom. Depending on whether people are on subscription or not, their emphasis on shopping experience differed. So we created two different personas and journey maps for the shop specifically.
After secondary research, we contacted actual Dexcom customers and G6 users to gain some insight into their own personal shopping experiences. In total, we had 18 interviews consisting of both user interviews and usability testing of our prototypes. Of these 18 interviewees, 13 of them were Canadian users. We wanted to hear about their online shopping experiences and habits to better understand the main pain points.
We organized all the interview notes and responses on our Miro board to visually categorize the different opportunities we could design for.
Affinity Diagramming (Miro) + Conducting Remote Interviews
Main User Interview Takeaways
Factoring in Dexcom's Goals
While we interviewed and tested our prototype with users, we also had weekly stand-up meetings with Dexcom mentors to ensure that our product is addressing business concerns as well. We had a small workshop designed to understand what our Dexcom mentors valued most by having them "buy" features when given $1-$10.
From our workshop sesssion, we realized a major business goal we wanted to address was to simplify the subscription process and make it more accessible to existing Dexcom users. Users then won't have to worry about repurchasing sensors and transmitters when they're running low. More subscriptions also means more customer loyalty. Therefore both parties can benefit from this feature.
Final Solution
TLDR: Customized shopping experience with more flexability and accessibility!
Our solution consisted of 3 main features that directly addressed both user and business concerns. Our solution redesigned the shopping experience with easy re-orders, a direct subscription process, and the ability to efficiently manage one's account and inventory.
Non Subscription User Flow:
- Straightforward shopping
- Reminder & Updates
- Promote subscription
Subscription User Flow
- Track shipment
- Subscription management
- Replace / Return
With 3 rounds of user testing with 7 Dexcom users, we achieved and exceeded the expectations with a net promotor score of 8.5 out of 10. Our team spent 15+ hours interviewing users and 35+ hours prototyping and iterating so it was incredibly rewarding and insightful to hear back from real people as it really humanized the work and research we were doing on our project. Our project was then handed off to Dexcom professionals and even won development approval.
Information Architecture
To make such a thorough experience, we created a very detailed user flow that helped make informed decisions and had 3 major benefits:
1. Helped the team identify edge cases like what happened after users' subscription plan ends
2. Helped me brainstorm the ideal points for promoting subscription which was the green part in the flow
3. Faciliated the communication to key stakeholders about the design
I also worked with another designer to come up with a comprehensive site map for the in-app shop. It helped the team understand the information architecture of the app and set a solid foundation for navigation and interaction. With the sitemap, we were able to clarify the logics among different pages, prioritize features, make informed decisions on the overall navigation and interaction.
My Role
As a Product Designer, I conducted primary and secondary user research to better understand users' needs and wants with the app. I also worked with my team to analyze all of our research data and conducted 2 remote usabillity tests to utilize the insights and improve upon our prototype. I also helped lead workshops with Dexcom mentors to better understand their business goals and worked to align it with users' needs to design an optimal product for both parties. I initiated our wireframing process and created detailed screens based on user and mentor feedback.
As Prototype Lead, I took charge of which exact screens we needed to create and assigned members to work on specific features and worked hard to incorporate the feedback we got from both our usability tests and our mentor meetings. We went through several iterations and thankfully, our hard work paid off as mentors and other Dexcom employees were meaningfully impressed with our final designs.
"I mentored Anna on an e-commerce design project for her internship Dexcom. Anna and her team did a great job detailing the customer journey, but also leaning in to understanding the operational challenges related to product merchandizing and order fulfillment of a medical device, which is not a straightforward task. The designs she and her team produced were both clean in design and comprehensive in scope; I was very impressed with the final outcome. Anna - keep up the great work!"
Caroline Goodman, Senior Director, Global E-Commerce at Dexcom
Recognitions
After presenting our final designs to over 30 Dexcom stakeholders, they were thoroughly impressed by the comprehensiveness of our prototype and the attention to detail in our designs.
“I thought you hit the target spot on. Giving people a sense of flexibility and control - that was great. Kudos for going beyond the design brief and thinking about how it would be integrated [...] Really solid!"
"It's a really extensive prototype to click around with and so many different screens and flows. Really great job and great work here!
Alex Diener, Senior Director Of User Experience Design at Dexcom
Lars Mueller, Head of Diabetes Design Initiative @ UCSD
Shoutout to my amazing teammates and mentors (not all pictured here) during these 10 weeks!
Overall, this project gave me invaluable industry experience by allowing me to practice communicating my designs and thought process to real life stakeholders, conducting user interviews and usability tests with real customers and consumers, and learning to balance user needs and company values while designing. I can't wait to apply all I've learned here to my future projects!
Lessons Learned
1. Learning to design with both the users and business goals in mind.
One of the greater challenges I faced during this project was aligning the customers’ needs with Dexcom's business goals. There were times where we had to sacrifice certain features and flows since although they benefitted users, they did not best serve the company. Our mentor meetings were incredibly valuable as I would weigh their concerns with the users' and proceed to make more informed decisions after analyzing the tradeoffs accordingly.
2. Effectively communicating the value of our designs to outside audiences.
During the 10 week sprint, we had two big presentations to prepare for. I realized that it’s so very important to create a story with our presentations and show people quite simply why they should care and how our designs would impact real people. I also learned to be more considerate about the word choices, questions, and stories we crafted after receiving presentation feedback during our valuable group critiques and mentor meetings.