Medical Cannabis UX Strategy 

Goal: A new brand and experience for a Medical Cannabis Licensed Producer
Role: UX Strategy, UX Architecture
Scope: Research synthesis, User needs prioritization, Journey mapping, Experience strategy and concepting

The Problem

With the growing maturity of the cannabis industry in Canada, in addition to federal legalization of recreational cannabis, our Medical Cannabis client was finding it difficult to attract and retain patients. The value of choosing of medical cannabis LP was not apparent to consumers who could easily obtain cannabis through the recreational market without the need for a prescription.

The Approach

Working closely with the client and our team - we created a new value exchange and patient experience strategy to attract and retain medical cannabis patients.

For the Strategy portion of this engagement, we went through a few key phases:

1. Learn

2. Prioritize

3. Concept

Learn

Statistics Canada data showed that the number of medical cannabis patients being registered was beginning to plateau. In order to grow the business, we needed to attract net new patients, convert patients from other LPs to our client, or better retain our existing patients.

Patient Research

We engaged a third-party research company to conduct a large-scale digital ethnography of Canadian Medical Cannabis patients. I worked closely with the vendor to define the research question - and their research social scientists used proprietary software to collect and analyze the digital footprint of thousands of Canadians who use medical cannabis.

We learned of five major archetypes that exist in the Canadian Market. These patient archetypes ranged on a spectrum according to their views and behaviours on how to live well with illness and pain. The archetypes included patient views on cannabis, segmentation data, reasons to adopt or reject medical cannabis, and most importantly of all, the archetypes underlying motivation behind their behaviour with medical cannabis. I conducted a thorough analysis of each archetype, and identified opportunities with respect to the brand, potential experiences and content, and market saturation.

The outcome of this phase provided us with the tools and data to move onto the next phase: the prioritization of archetypes and opportunities to pursue.

Key Outcomes:

• Fewer Canadians were becoming Medical Cannabis patients each year

• Medical Cannabis patients in Canada ranged according to how they viewed “living well”

• The impact of each archetype could be assessed by market saturation, archetype influence, and opportunity.

Prioritization

Through small and large group activities with stakeholders across the business we identifed the priority archetype to focus on. I distilled a 150-page research document provided by our research partner into a concise reference package and facilitated a series of prioritization exercises.

The priority archetype attributes aligned well with the business’ priorities and product line and had commonalities with other archetypes. Furthermore, the selected archetype held a fair share of the market - and was seen as an influencer amongst the other archetypes. We felt confident that this choice in archetype would allow us to capture this specific segment while influencing others at the same time.

Our archetype was new to medical cannabis, with little to no understanding of medical cannabis and its capabilities, vocal within their digital communities, and sought to find relief from their ailments to be able to provide for their families and loved ones.

Based on the archetype choice - we conducted a series of in-depth patient interviews with existing LP patients to further add colour to our profiles and identify the journey these patients go through to obtain their medical cannabis.

Through these interviews, I was able to document a detailed customer journey for a medical cannabis patient - and identify key moments of opportunity where our digital tools could have the most impact and influence. As an example, we found that while many patients are excited to start medical cannabis treatment - many are not aware that it may take months before an effect can be felt. This misunderstanding of impact had a negative impact on their view of medical cannabis and led to many patients leaving medical cannabis altogether.

Once we identified the key archetype and key moments in that archetypes journey - we were able to begin creating experiences that met the most important needs at the most important moments.

Key Outcomes

• A single priority archetype would allow us to focus our strategy and experience on moments that will have highest impact

• Identify commonalities between the archetypes helps us gain broader reach

• Patients who tried Medical Cannabis with sufficient guidance and who were able to successful titrate up to a therapeutic dosage were more likely to remain long-term customers.

Concept

Within the market, we had noticed a lack of end-to-end journeys available for Medical Cannabis patients. Most LPs focused on acquisition without much value on the post-acquisition experience of their patients (because of the tightly regulated world of Medical Cannabis in Canada, switching LPs can often be an onerous process - so the focus on acquisition over post-acquisition may have made business-sense to other LPs).

We, however, saw the opportunity to provide a rich, guided post-acquisition experience to retain our customers once we attracted them and grow these patients over time.

In the end, we created a concept for a tool that the user could use through the entire journey - this tool could be used to help them learn about Medical Cannabis and its impact on their health, acquire a medical document and facilitate the registration process, and most importantly follow the patient as they test out cannabis and find their therapeutic dosage.

Key Outcomes:

• A proof-of-concept app that focused on education and the post-purchase experience

• An experience strategy for a suite of tools and content pieces that focused on helping patients feel informed and agency over their treatment

• A focus on cannabis as medicine - with specific terminology and call-outs to scientific literature

Please note: most aspects and outcomes of this project are covered under a non-disclosure agreement, but I happy to discuss the process and approach IRL.