OSCAR WACZYNSKI

Home

Resume

Contact

OSCAR WACZYNSKI

Product designer

Oscar Waczynski

Home

Resume

Contact

CASE STUDY — CHEWY · 2016–2017

Bringing pet prescriptions to Chewy.

Product design, Mobile (iOS + Android), Multi-persona UX, E-commerce, System design

The
basics

The basics

Shipped

Shipped

Early 2017

Form factor

Form factor

iOS, Android

Role

Role

Sr Product Designer

Company

Company

Chewy

Chewy wasn't in the prescription business. Getting there meant designing a multi-persona, multi-surface experience across iOS, Android, and web — with a flow logic that had to work before the infrastructure existed to support it.

Key project takeaways

Key project takeaways

Ran discovery

Ran discovery

Personas, user journeys, and prescription states across three platforms

Personas, user journeys, and prescription states across three platforms

Designed features and flows from prototype to dev handoff

Designed features and flows from prototype to dev handoff

Launched Chewy's first prescription product capability

Launched Chewy's first prescription product capability

Laid the foundation for what became a $1.1B+ business division

Laid the foundation for what became a $1.1B+ business division

High level

Before this project, Chewy had no prescription product capability. We were turning away an entire category of pet health purchases because there was no system for handling the approval workflow that prescription items require.


The core design tension: the approval process between a pet owner, their vet's office, and Chewy's customer service team is inherently asynchronous and fragmented — and we needed to make it feel manageable across three different form factors and for three completely different types of users, each with a different job to do at a different point in the journey.

Design goals

  • Integrate prescription products into the ecommerce site and apps

  • Design a scalable architecture for managing for vet approvals

The process

My scope was the mobile experience — iOS and Android — working in parallel with the designer handling desktop, and coordinating through shared patterns from our design system. Approvals were owned by a separate team within customer service and my job was to bring that logic to life across 2 native mobile apps.

01

Discovery with customer service leadership and staff to understand how prescriptions could be handled.

02

Mapped the three-persona journey: pet owner placing an order, vet office responding to a prescription request, and Chewy CS staff manually securing approvals.

03

Identified every surface where prescription states needed to appear and defined the new messaging, states, and UI elements each required.

04

Designed the full vet order status lifecycle, from pending through confirmed, so both pet owners and CS staff always had visibility into where an order stood.

05

Built within the shared design system and pattern library, ensuring the prescription layer integrated cleanly across platforms and worked with dev teams to build it out.

Results

Chewy went from zero prescription business to operating the largest online pet pharmacy network in the U.S. with Chewy Health which now generates an estimated $1.1–1.2 billion in annual sales. Their latest filing (as of June 2026) shows around 30% of Chewy's active customer base uses the pharmacy. Humble beginnings turned to massive upside.

$1.1B+

$1.1B+

Chewy Health annual sales (est.)

~28%

~28%

Active customers using pharmacy services

The prescription category is now described as a high-margin division fueled by an aging pet population and a strategic push into physical veterinary clinics. None of that existed before this work created the foundation.

Other work from my time at Chewy

Design language & UI kit

Stood up Chewy's first shared design system across iOS, Android, and web — replacing 7 different versions of the same Autoship icon that had ended up in production.

Designed and implemented customer reviews

Designed a custom notification system adopted across iOS, Android, and web — enabling consistent, contextual communication across the full product surface, including order status updates for prescription and Autoship flows.

User generated Q&A for products

Designed a custom notification system adopted across iOS, Android, and web — enabling consistent, contextual communication across the full product surface, including order status updates for prescription and Autoship flows.

Address & payment flows

Redesigned how address and payment updates propagated to Autoships. Customers updating their primary payment weren't seeing it reflect on subscriptions — a small change that produced a measurable drop in CS call volume.

Cross-platform notification system

Designed a custom notification system adopted across iOS, Android, and web — enabling consistent, contextual communication across the full product surface, including order status updates for prescription and Autoship flows.

Design language & UI kit

Stood up Chewy's first shared design system across iOS, Android, and web — replacing 7 different versions of the same Autoship icon that had ended up in production.

Address & payment flows

Redesigned how address and payment updates propagated to Autoships. Customers updating their primary payment weren't seeing it reflect on subscriptions — a small change that produced a measurable drop in CS call volume.

Designed and implemented customer reviews

Designed a custom notification system adopted across iOS, Android, and web — enabling consistent, contextual communication across the full product surface, including order status updates for prescription and Autoship flows.

Cross-platform notification system

Designed a custom notification system adopted across iOS, Android, and web — enabling consistent, contextual communication across the full product surface, including order status updates for prescription and Autoship flows.

User generated Q&A for products

Designed a custom notification system adopted across iOS, Android, and web — enabling consistent, contextual communication across the full product surface, including order status updates for prescription and Autoship flows.

More case studies coming soon