Executive Summary

Premise: In a bid to increase customer retention and lifetime value, GoodRx sought to expand beyond its core prescription discount service by moving into a more holistic space built around a “Managing Illness” theme. In this instance, a bespoke usability study doubled as discovery in how it additionally explored a sizable investment opportunity: the wellness management arena.

The hybrid approach utilized a multi-stage protocol that leveraged customized heuristic evaluations, competitive landscape analyses, and a usability study with participants who:

• Represented diverse sampling: They managed 11 chronic health conditions and used 16 other wellness resources for self-care

• Responded to series of verbal probes in cognitive interviews

• Completed randomized tasks to mitigate demand characteristics: To obtain accurate sentiments and discover how they attuned to value (“valueception”)

Dozens of findings were synthesized into 7 core themes, and a gap analysis revealed how GoodRx does and doesn’t help customers manage certain illnesses. It additionally revealed differences in mental models, which form rather variably against (1) the crowded field of comparable wellness resources on the market, and (2) the US’ opaque healthcare system.

Value & Impact: This work introduced to GoodRx the first critical assessment of emotional tolls associated with chronic illnesses, as well as the evolving self-care strategies that people form as a result. The client accepted the study’s findings and insights, which it used to inform design recommendations about how to rethink not only the existing content funnels in question, but even a wholesale reconsideration of its core service.

GoodRx Mission

“To build better ways for people to find the right care at the best price. Our technology gives all Americans — regardless of income or insurance status — the knowledge, choice, and care they need to stay healthy.”

Business & Research Goals

• Help the company better fulfill its mission by expanding into a more holistic space built around a “Managing Illness” theme.

  • Optimize existing features for doing so by engaging users to participate in the app experience beyond prescription-oriented tasks.

• Understand the current customer journey.

  • Pinpoint unmet needs and actionable opportunities to enhance the lives of those with ongoing or chronic health problems.

Two-Stage Protocol

• Part 1: Quickly size up the competition

  • Conduct heuristic analyses of the GoodRx app — alongside 3 leading wellness apps — to pinpoint relevant severities of usability questions in standardized ways. With many dozens of established sets of heuristics available in the world, a set of medical device heuristics (Zhang et al., 2003) was best suited to this particular task, which itself is blended from several other established sets.

  • Fold into a detailed competitive landscape analysis to assess how trends and mental models have developed in what is already a crowded field. See Figure 1 for overview.

• Part 2: Test existing flows

  • Being a combination of generative and evaluative work, and having therefore settled upon a discovery-usability model, this stage drew from 11 semi-moderated interviews. First, participants:

    • Were screened for managing at least one chronic health condition

    • Represented 11 different illnesses

    • Cumulatively used 16 different wellness apps

  • Then, several randomized tasks were tested and assessed with an eye toward mitigating demand characteristics in order to obtain accurate sentiments. (Demand characteristics are cues that reveal research objectives; they run the risk of biasing participants, who may alter their responses/behaviors if they think they understand what the research is about.) Sample activities included:

    • Task completion, including whether assistance was needed

    • Time on task

    • Semantic differential scales to assess difficulty

    • Post-test questionnaire

Primary Findings

Since the public has long associated GoodRx with one core function — clipping medication coupons — and since the company hasn’t yet developed relevant flows, few participants were primed to conceive using the app in new ways, such as consulting it for health conditions or medication resources.

• Themes: Figure 2

• Sample of thematic findings: Figure 3

Next Steps, Opportunities, Recommendations

• People consult a hodgepodge of resources to manage illness — an important opportunity to seize upon.

• From the perspective of illness management, GoodRx didn’t exceed anyone’s expectations, which wasn’t wholly surprising since it must first develop new, more robust content funnels, starting with (but far from limited to) the data sample represented in Figures 2 and 3. To woo people away from the competition, and whatever the eventual set of solutions, funnels should not only be informative, but also accessible and reassuring.

  • Product teams must keep front of mind that customers will engage with the app under chronic, temporary, or even situational strain (emotional, cognitive, behavioral).

• When ready, they would also need to reconsider the app’s IA, starting with elevating such content to the same level as its coupons, i.e., a spot in the primary navigation.

• A substantial undertaking awaits GoodRx should it pursue this initiative; the wellness space is already crowded. If the proposed functionality (1) eventually becomes robust enough to generally be considered holistic and (2) stands to sideline some of the competition, it should likely exist within the GoodRx Gold subscription for monetization reasons (after a free trial period).

• Should it succeed in these efforts, and to distance itself from being exclusively known for discount prescriptions, the company might consider changing its name so it’s not exclusively associated with prescriptions (Rx).

So what? Impact and Business Outcomes

• This work introduced the first critical assessment of how much GoodRx does and doesn’t aid users with their particular illnesses. It surfaced not only what was missing in direct app interactions, but also ancillary issues confronted by those managing an illness or condition.

  • It also begged questions of [what some refer to as] valueception: How do we get people to attune to actual value? How is utmost value assessed?

• After 2 separate hour-long presentations to the GoodRx product team, findings and recommendations were well received. Many thanked us for bringing clarity and inspiration to the initiative and the above recommendations were integrated into the product roadmap.

Primary Limitations

• With the Managing Illness theme in its nascence, this ideally would have been a project with deeper generative components, but circumstances regrettably constrained the team to test only a few current app flows. However, there was a trade-off. While greater depth and breadth of discovery and assessment were sacrificed, most findings, including usability results, were news to product teams, as testing largely focused on the edges of the app’s core couponing function.

• Testing would have ideally been conducted between subjects, which also would have mitigated the risk of encountering demand characteristics. But an accelerated timetable limited recruitment, resulting in within-subjects participation.

• The client’s research director departed shortly after the first stakeholder alignment meeting, taking base knowledge about the project’s intended direction which wasn’t shared with colleagues.

Retrospective

• What did I learn?

  • Despite easy access to abundant online information, it remains difficult for some — based on the nature of their illness — to locate useful, reassuring resources, particularly in the absence of a healthcare provider. It was understandably poignant to learn personal details about how confusion, frustration, and hopelessness stem from incomplete understandings of an illness.

  • Moderation went so well that demand characteristics weren’t evident.

• What would I have done differently?

  • Had it been an option, I wouldn’t have commingled the generative and evaluative stages of the project, but time was short.

  • Had there been more time and participants, I would’ve wanted to conduct experiential sampling (ESM) to better track and understand mental states longitudinally.

• What went well? What will I keep doing?

  • The hybrid nature of the project created a valuable opportunity to mix and match heuristics from less familiar but still established sets.

  • The client and team were fully engaged, collaborative, and productive.