Locum Store App

The locum app experience was already in full swing, with pharmacists across London logging in daily to pick up shifts. It’s perfect for people on the go; whether they’re waiting for the kettle to boil or doing the school run.

But store managers are just as busy. To make their lives easier, we set out to build a dedicated app experience for them too. A space where they could quickly post shifts, request locums, manage schedules and handle invoices.

This also gave us the chance to streamline our tech stack by bringing both sides of the marketplace into the app, rather than juggling a browser platform for one group and a native experience for another.

First, we set out to understand what store managers actually needed from a dedicated app experience. This was the perfect opportunity to surface pain points in the existing flow and prioritise the key features required for a successful V1 launch.

It also gave me valuable insight into a typical day in the life of a store manager, and learn about their day-to-day duties both within the Zen platform and outside of it.

Through these conversations, we uncovered additional opportunities worth exploring: things like rate negotiations, bulk shift uploads, and giving locums the ability to register interest in specific shifts—helping managers make more considered hiring decisions for certain roles or stores.

The launch of the store manager app was one of the final pieces needed to help Zen Locum become not just a profitable business, but a more autonomous one too.

Both goals were hit, and the feedback was positive. With high engagement across both the customer and store apps, the product settled into a stable rhythm, giving the operations team the tools they needed to take it from there.

With things in a good place, I was asked to step in and support the design work on our flagship product, Zen Educate. I’d already been dipping my toes into that side of the business, and this marked a natural next step in my journey with Zen.