Designers
BD Rowa™ & FLUID Design Team
Year
2026
Category
Product
Country
Germany
Design Studio / Department
FLUID Design GmbH
Three questions to the project team
What was the particular challenge of the project from a UX point of view?
The core challenge was to design an intuitive interface for diverse users, from absolute beginners and experienced pharmacy staff to pharmacy owners. We had to ensure safe operation and accuracy in a high-pressure, fast-paced environment where errors have critical consequences. We also had to navigate strict regulatory requirements and medication-handling practices across different countries, each with their own mental models of pharmacy workflows. Technically, we needed to maintain feasibility while ensuring the UI worked universally across these varying practices and integrated seamlessly into their existing ecosystem of inventory management systems, without forcing users to learn entirely new processes or slow down their work.
What was your personal highlight in the development process? Was there an aha!-moment, was there a low point?
Early on, we built features with a lot of complexity, giving pharmacists precise control, but we quickly realized this didn't match reality. Pharmacy workers are occupied with day-to-day operations and don't have time to master sophisticated workflows. We then shifted our thinking: the robot should be the assistant doing tasks for the user, not the other way around. We stripped back complexity and optimized for speed and simplicity. The real highlight came during pilot testing. Both experienced users from the legacy system and completely new users could immediately accomplish what they needed with no friction and no learning curve. That's when we knew we'd solved the right problem.
Where do you see yourself and the project in the next five years?
We're committed to ongoing testing with pharmacists, continuously iterating and expanding features based on real pharmacy workflows. As part of the redesign, we've split the UI into on-premise and a web platform, which we’ve already started building together. This separation creates new possibilities for how we can offer our customers additional value that wasn't possible before. While the on-premise interface stays focused on speed and simplicity for daily operations, the web platform serves users who need deeper insights and control. Long-term, we plan to apply the new design language to our other products and to fulfill our goal of supporting pharmacies worldwide, no matter where and how they work.
