Julia Hana Pak
Redesigning CVS prescription list to boost refill rates:
12% increase in conversion
OVERVIEW
I led the redesign of CVS’s legacy prescription list page for web and mobile web, partnering with a junior designer. My contributions included cross-functional collaboration across related experiences and contributions to the design system for consistency and scalability.
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
TEAM
2 designer, 4 developers, 2 product managers, 1 content writer
TIMELINE
2025
Background
Problem
Customers were struggling to refill prescriptions due to a clunky, friction-filled mobile and desktop experience.
Solution
I led a UI-focused redesign that clarified refill statuses, simplified interactions, and improved mobile usability—making it easier for users to complete prescription refills and directly supporting CVS’s goal to increase add-to-cart conversions.
Results
The improved prescriptions page resulted in a 12% increase in conversion. Averaging 130K add-to-cart per week increase.
1. Initiate & Scope
Measure success
I worked with the product manager to find the currrent metrics and the desired goal from business as well as define the user's goals. We discussed the scope, the technical constraints. The user goal was to unblock the user from refilling prescriptions.
Goal #1
Increase add-to-cart rates
Goal #2
Reduce calls to the pharmacy
Goal #3
Establish consistent reusable design blocks across all pages of CVS
Scope
While a native app would be ideal, time and budget constraints required us to implement the experience within a web-based framework. Also medication images were limited by our third-party vendor, which often provided inaccurate or generic visuals. Ensuring alignment with brand guidelines while maintaining user trust highlighted the need to explore new vendor partnerships for high-quality, accurate medication images for the next phase.
2. Discover
Audit the experience
Ready-to-refill prescriptions were buried in the list.
Delayed and action messages were too generic; leading to confusion and calls to the pharmacy.
The ‘Add to Cart’ interaction was unintuitive—users misunderstood the checkbox behavior and dynamic button label changes.
Research
I wanted to learn if the users mentioned any of the pain points I found. So I dug into past user research with the user researcher. According to the tests, users have said they are used to the conventional e-commerce influenced flows and interactions like 'Add to basket' button on each Rx. They were confused by the multi-select flow with the singular refill selected button on the top, especially on mobile.
Customers tested better with more conventional e-commerce-influenced flows and interactions.
Prescription status, fill date, and fills left are the most important information they want surfaced.
Serious need for status explanations to prevent calling the pharmacy.
Many tend to use mobile to order refills more than the desktop.
Align on the pain points
Screenshots of the working sessions:
Analyze competitors
I looked at some e-commerce websites that many users are familiar with. I pulled some things that worked well.
Competitive analysis inspiratiron image:
Review internal pages for consistency
CVS Health had a company-wide initiative to unify the visual language across all pharmacy services. I was tasked with redesigning the prescription list experience for the website with the new design system 2.0 and aligning it with the add-to-cart interaction of the CVS Specialty site.
This effort supported a larger goal: to deliver a consistent and trustworthy experience for customers interacting with any CVS platform. The CVS Specialty reported high volume of add-to-cart rates, therefore, product team and I strategized to reuse its elements such as the cart behavior and visual style. The new design system changed from red to blue button styles.
3. Define
How Might…
we empower customers to complete prescription refills digitally without having to call the pharmacy for help?
Hypothesize solutions
After ideating with the team and discussing how might we statements, we came up hypothesises.
Hypothesis 1
Simplifying the page to show only essential prescription information will improve users’ ability to quickly understand their medication status and navigate the experience with less cognitive load.
Hypothesis 2
Highlighting prescription statuses with contextual explanations will help users more confidently decide when and how to take action.
Hypothesis 3
Introducing an e-commerce pattern “Add to Cart” interaction, modeled after CVS Specialty’s interface, will feel more familiar to users and lead to increased refill initiation rates.
4. Ideate
Brainstorm with stakeholders
I facilitated critique sessions with stakeholders to gather feedback and prioritize solutions. From these sessions, I iterated on multiple layouts that directly addressed key pain points, such as upsell visibility and cart usability.
I developed a phased implementation plan that delivered immediate wins, like improved cross-sell placement, while laying the groundwork for future enhancements, such as dynamic bundling options.
5. Design
Final UI
I designed for diverse scenarios, including different prescription scenarios, filter and sort, and error scenarios.
More intuitive 'Add-to-cart' interaction
Users were confused when the 'refill all' button suddenly switched to 'refill'. If we used mobile-friendly interactions we can decrease friction.
BEFORE
AFTER
Better Information Hierarchy
Added clearer status indicators with color coding, grouped related information logically, and prominent call-to-action buttons.
BEFORE
AFTER
Improved navigation
One key improvement was reducing the number of links on the page. To address this, we grouped secondary actions under a “More” button — a common iOS UX pattern — balancing user and business needs while reducing cognitive overload and visual clutter.
BEFORE
AFTER
Mobile-optimized design
Designed mobile-responsive experiences with touch-optimized interactions across devices, maintaining consistent functionality. Reduced cognitive overload through progressive disclosure and dedicated pages for complex tasks — while aligning with existing patterns in the CVS Specialty cart and checkout experience.
Updated to CVS's new design system
CVS was moving away from red CTA's to blue CTA's with many other changes. I made sure that the designs reflected these new changes. Also, I contributed to the design system to add badging. I worked with the design systems team and brand team to call out the statuses more. CVS uses a lot of statuses throughout the organization so this helped other teams as well. I used CVS brand colors to make the statuses for prescriptions.
6. Validate
Conduct A/B tests
We didn't have enough time or resources to do usability testing with our research team. However, with the help of the Optimization team we conducted A/B tests on the ‘Add-to-Cart’ function and status badges, using the existing web and mobile experience as the control. The new design performed strongly—our optimization partner noted that the badges highlighted ‘Ready for Refill’ more effectively, with projected incremental revenue of $2.3M if rolled out at scale.
7. Deliver
Handoff to engineering
I created annotated designs in Figma, documenting all edge cases, interactions, and repeated components to ensure a smooth handoff. To streamline development, I organized the cart redesign almost as a mini design system, enabling engineers to scale the solution efficiently.
Conclusion
This project wasn’t just about UI polish. It was about solving business and user problems through smart strategy and focused execution.
I led upfront working sessions with key stakeholders to align on goals, pain points, and technical constraints, then used rapid wireframing and scalable design systems to focus resources where they mattered most.
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