In the world of pharmaceutical sales, the way to evangelize a drug like Belsomra is to host frequent & targeted meetings with healthcare providers who, if interested, begin to sift through their patient base to prescribe a voucher or a coupon to, and ultimately begin the user experience of working to alleviate insomnia.

The standard sales process is :

1. The sales representative met with the doctor, for about 90 seconds to 5 minutes, either digitally or in-person. (Covid put a significant downwards pressure on in-person meetings and sales representatives had to quickly pivot to use their iPads in a new environment.)

2. The sales representative would determine which pages of the iPad to highlight (depending on the meeting time, and the doctor), and describe the benefits of trying Belsomra

3. The doctor would then prescribe a 10mg tablet to the patient, upping the dose to 20mg with time.

4. If the patient enjoyed the effects of Belsomra, the doctor would then write a script and the patient would use Belsomra as recommended.

Challenges that the iPad presented:

1. The information architecture did not lend itself to be clear or concise during moments of stress when the meetings became shorter (as they often did when the doctor was rushing from appointment to appointment.) Sales representatives would commonly get confused about the sitemap and would have to click or tap around until they found the page they were looking for, in order to support their verbal points.

2. The storytelling aspects that sales representatives could utilize and fill in with body language completely disappeared during COVID when 100% of the meetings now had to be through Zoom. How do we use a tool that was supplementary and secondary to the presentation before, as the main presentation now that all communication had to be online?

3. There were convoluted UI patterns that evoked interactions, completely disjointed from one another. Buttons were used for modals, as well as to move the user to the next page, as well as tooltips.

Solutions

1. Eliminate excessive bloat on pages such as scrollbars, extra buttons, modals that re-tell the same information as already illustrated by the content presented.

• As an example, I removed the scrollbar, to help the sales representative tell a cohesive and holistic story of Arthur, the persona that doctors could envision and check against their patient pool. By bringing up the most important information for both parties (whereas the medical history was hidden under the scroll bar which sales representatives seldom utilized in the interest of time). Doctors could focus on the information that mattered to them, sales representatives could still tell the compelling story and not have to use any extra clicks, scrolls, taps, etc.

2. Display information in a visually appealing, beautiful and clean view.

I worked out the hierarchy of the story that sales representatives were sharing in their sales pitches. Sales representatives prepared sales pitches for varying lengths of time, ranging from 15 seconds to 30 minutes. The presentation hierarchy would expand and collapse from the most vital screens, which I re-organized and re-designed to reduce clutter, remove scrolling features that would make presentations more challenging, and added new functionality to make disclosures and medical information easier to access.

A lot of the information was stored under modals, as well as the memory of sales representatives. As shown in the pages above, I was able to extrapolate information from a bulky screen to showcase data that doctors actually care about in a clear and concise view. The graphics are loud, easy to point to, and are up to current brand standards, appearing the same across the branding documents, the website, and coverage emails Merck sends out to doctors.

The goal is always to make it extremely easy for sales representatives to hit on points in their narrative and tell the story of Belsomra in a smooth, easy-flowing manner, no matter if they have 30 seconds, a minute, or half an hour.

3. Create a design library and eliminate any outdated & disjointed UI patterns

Prior to my joining, the Belsomra team did not have a cohesive Design System. I re-configured the components that the team had, refurbished the UI with a new, clean look & feel, and worked closely with the attorneys to make sure we follow all guidelines and protocols.