Background —

WBA—which is composed of Walgreens, Boots UK, and Alliance Healthcare—oversees a global network of pharmacies that continue to push further into healthcare services.

As these brands expand—offering COVID-19 vaccinations, chronic care plans, and health coaching, WBA wanted to expand its role as the storyteller narrating it all.

Personas —

WBA had grand editorial ambitions, but first it needed to identify its core audiences. Stakeholder interviews and traffic data on old articles revealed four: Purpose-Driven Partners, Potential Employees, Investors, and the Press.

Innovation Concepts —

While we planned an initial site launch with core functions to publish rich stories for our four audiences, we also looked to the future. To do that, we created a series of innovation concepts that illuminated the next few years of WBA’s efforts to become a more modern storyteller.

Creating a Roadmap —

WBA couldn’t undertake all the innovation concepts at once, and we never expected them to. So, we created a priority list in the Now, Next, Next framework, plotting each concept on a desirability & feasibility matrix.

Desirability —

What value does this provide the customer?

Feasibility — 

How ready is WBA to take this on?

Design System —

A robust design system built for scale was key to bringing the initial and subsequent releases of WBA to market. With a focus on editorial flexibility, I oversaw the creation of a system containing dozens of components to display video, images, articles, and data for CSR and Financial reports.

Time-Saving Search —

In a design system, there are no small features. For WBA’s audiences, particularly the Press, I wanted to create a search experience that was above class in its speed.

New features, like providing a list of popular searches to save the user from typing and loading results into the tool—instead of creating a separate results page—were some of the design choices made early on to bring WBA’s search experience in-line with our audience’s expectations for convenience.

Mobile Data Visualization —

For the Investor audience, representing WBA’s financial performance in detail was key. However, these design elements don’t always scale down to the mobile screen very well.

We took special care to utilize all the extra interaction patterns that mobile affords—mainly side-swiping—to make the data more approachable on the small screen.

Progress —

The first release of WBA came at the beginning of 2020. The brand is now launching the Pressboard innovation concept and is following that up with improvements to its recruitment experience.

The WBA design system is now being used to launch similar experiences for entirely new healthcare brands in the WBA ecosystem.

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