The Expanding Universal Drug Table
CONTEXTAn Admin tool acting as a member product
The original SmithRx Member Portal wasn’t designed for members at all. It was a stripped-down version of an internal admin dashboard — clunky, dense, and utterly unfit for public release. Internally, it had earned the nickname “Voldemort.”
Members were expected to navigate this labyrinth of internal logic just to complete basic tasks like checking drug prices or viewing ID cards. Unsurprisingly, they couldn’t. Abandonment rates soared. Support calls tripled. And most damaging of all, it eroded trust. When members can’t understand their benefits, they start to doubt the plan itself.
DISCOVERYToo broken to launch
The portal was removed from the launch plan and shelved due to leadership’s frustration with the experience. The overwhelming consensus from the top executives was that it was “too broken” to release to its members.
The core experience — looking up a medication — was fundamentally broken. Because the portal had been stripped from an internal admin tool, it expected members to behave like pharmacy techs. To get a result, you had to input exact information down to the medication’s dosage and form — no guidance, no autocomplete, no tolerance for mistakes. If anything was off, the search would return a blank screen.
The only useful part of the profile didn't even supply complete plan information. But, at least the IDs were available. *The patient data displayed is test data only and not real user data.
Search required the deep knowledge of medication data including NDC information, yet was supposed to be a member experience. The experience in its current state was esentially a non-starter.This wasn’t just a clunky UI — it was a failure of imagination. A failure to acknowledge that members don’t think in dosage forms and generics. They think in real-world terms: “I need my antidepressant,” “I’m picking up Zoloft,” “What will this cost me?”
And they weren’t even failing — the system was. It asked too much, offered too little, and revealed a deeper truth: no one had designed this for an actual human being.
Designing only what matters
Rather than fixate on features, we asked a more foundational question: how might we design only what matters? What are the moments members care about most — and how can we clear the way for them?
From that lens, I established three design principles that became the product’s north star:
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If someone can search Google, they should be able to search for their meds.
This principle replaced technical form logic with real-world language. We anchored search behavior around what members actually know — brand names, partial recall, common typos — and built the system to meet them there. This informed the creation of Find My Meds, a smart, single-field drug search powered by autocomplete and fuzzy matching.
The approach leaned on Jakob’s Law (design for familiarity), Hick’s Law (simplify decision points), and Fitt’s Law (make the action obvious)
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Don’t just tell me what my plan is — show me where I stand.
Most benefit portals regurgitate plan PDFs. But members want to know where they are in their coverage journey — especially with deductibles as the key gating factor. Drawing on learnings from Anagram and Rally Health, I introduced a live “Plan” view that tracked member spend against deductible thresholds on a 24-hour data delay.
This wasn’t just transparency — it was relevance. Track My Spend became a clear example of designing for meaningful insight over static information.
These principles — Familiar Intuition, Recognition First, and Context Over Static — weren’t features. They were foundations. And they shaped everything that followed.
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If it’s important, make it obvious — not memorable.
Members frequently struggled to locate their Member ID, even though it was crucial during pharmacy visits. We moved away from burying key information and instead surfaced it contextually — clearly, accessibly, and consistently. This principle drove the redesign of Show Me My ID, and aligned with the core usability heuristic: recognition over recall.
STRATEGY
PRODUCT DESIGNThe app that does only what you need it to
We rebuilt the new Member App as a responsive, mobile-optimized web app with our members in mind. Every interaction, every layout, every moment was designed to do exactly what a member needed, precisely when they needed it.
An intelligent drug search replaced the brittle form. Autocomplete handled brand and generic confusion, as well as typos, returning relevant results quickly. Local pricing appeared alongside directions to nearby pharmacies. Members could now check prices, find their ID (and save a virtual card to their device), track their plan spending, and access benefit documents — all within a unified, mobile-first experience.
Batch operations that adapt to how you think
I designed a modular system that could work forwards or backwards—matching how different ops specialists think. One user might start with 'assign Zoloft to these programs' while another thinks 'update all programs by adding Zoloft.' Through extensive workflow mapping and prototype testing, I created interchangeable 'operators' and 'affectors' that made both approaches equally valid. What took 1-2 hours in spreadsheets now completed in minutes—with zero learning curve because the system matched each user's mental model.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business.
Speaking human, not database
Every data point is translated into ops language: structured and identifiable NDC and GPI codes are prominently ordered, with key identifiers being clear and meaningful. Technical fields remained accessible but secondary. Users finally trusted what they saw because it aligned with their expectations.
Macro of PAS view
Macro of Banjo or Connect View
Macro view on header/navigation
Configurations that anticipate
Smart drug lists and pre-filtered views eliminated the "where do I start" paralysis. Common workflows became one-click operations. The system remembered patterns and suggested next actions based on task context.
All / Connect / Banjo views stacked
NDC prompt field edit split screen
Safeguards that prevent disasters
Every high-risk action triggered contextual validation: price changes over 10% required confirmation, decimal anomalies flagged instantly, and bulk updates showed clear previews. The $203.70 pricing error that almost happened? Now impossible.
Macro price alert confirmation
OUTCOMEUser 'success' testing illuminated the excitement
During user acceptance testing, the excitement became undeniable. Clinical Review crashed our validation sessions just to test their workflows—like Banjo List exports—which transitioned flawlessly because I'd done my homework. Account Managers discovered they could pull AWP pricing and compare it against group rates for custom solutions. Teams scheduled for rollout months down the line wanted in immediately. What began as structured testing became organic advocacy.
Hours → Minutes
Operations drug management tasks
Zero training required
Users were up and running on day one
105% adoption
Exceeded target users
REFLECTIONUnshakeable foundation, transformative at scale
The UAT sessions were so rock-solid that for the first time during my SmithRx tenure, the product launched months ahead of schedule. The early delivery gave me runway to predict, design, and pre-validate the next three significant features: CSV import capabilities, a universal product detail template that could scale across the entire SmithRx ecosystem with dynamic permissions, and programmatic search that would enable true departmental scale. All designed, validated with stakeholders, and planned for rollout by day one launch.