An app for opticians and optical stores to manage orders and Bills.
ROLE
Founder
Principal UX and UI designer
Lead Developer
Period
March 2024 onwards
After building ASIRA Clinical, we partnered with Optical Market, an e-commerce and marketing team with over fifteen years of experience in marketing and selling eye care products to optician across India.
Based on conversations with the Optical Market team and optical store owners, we discovered a number of opportunities to build a simple, user friendly app that catered to all types of users - large opticians in metropolitan cities to small rural villages.
Understanding the Optical Store Market in India
The optical market in India is highly unregulated and at the moment, there are no governing bodies that have established any regulations. As a result, opticians are generally grouped together based on their size and their presence in the different population based cities - metros, urban centres, semi-urban centres and rural centres or villages.
Reasons for losing customers
Salesperson unavailable when store is busy
Store does not stock product
Customer does not return after placing an order
Customer is unhappy with the service
To solve this, I designed two flows for users to be able to capture customer details.
Opportunities
After speaking with opticians, optical store owners and sales people and customers, I identified a number of opportunities that would benefit users and customers alike:
Provide a simple UX that maps to existing real world workflows.
Access customer order details anytime, anywhere.
Communicate with and send order updates to customers directly from the optical stores phone number. Call the user directly if required.
Share customer order specifications to vendors directly.
Create, share and settle invoices directly from the app.
Manage inventory and product stock directly from the app. Many optical stores also expressed a desire to automatically place reorders for popular items that are low on stock.
Planning the experience
We first identified the workflows that opticians would perform on a daily basis. These became our primary workflows. All other activities that are carried out occasionally such as updating drafts, account details or watching tutorials were grouped under secondary workflows.
Navigating the app
Primary screens
I implemented a bottom tabbed navigation for the primary navigation - Home, Customers, Orders & Invoices.
Secondary Screens
The secondary screens are used less frequently than the primary screens. These pages include About, Privacy, Terms, etc.
Other secondary screens which are critical to the operation of the app but accessed infrequently are hidden under Account settings.
Managing customers
60% of A and B grade opticians currently use some form of software (primarily for inventory management), either from vendors like TechCherry and OpticalCRM, or simple Excel sheets.
However, smaller C and D grade stores rely on paper records or on good faith with customers within their small community.
However, many opticians that I spoke with said that customers will often change their mind while placing the order, choosing to either come back another day or not return entirely. Hence, if they could capture the customer's name and phone number BEFORE taking the order details, they could follow up and connect with the customer later on to encourage them to come back.
However, many opticians that I spoke with said that customers will often change their mind while placing the order, choosing to either come back another day or not return entirely. Hence, if they could capture the customer's name and phone number BEFORE taking the order details, they could follow up and connect with the customer later on to encourage them to come back.
View customer orders and invoices
Communicating with customers via WhatsApp
I created custom WA links that opticians could use to send to update customers about the status of their order or invoice. WA links allow the opticians to send WhatsApp messages to the customer directly from their official store phone number, instead of the message being sent via the WhatsApp API from an ASIRA phone number.
Placing and Managing orders
The primary goal of the app is to help optical stores manage their orders and inventory better in order to improve the customer experience and increase customer retention.
The majority of orders placed at an optical store are for spectacles, sunglasses and repairs. All orders follow a similar flow, but differ in the amount of data that is required to be captured.
spectacles
Spectacles are the most common reason that customers visit an optical store. Customers either come in with an existing prescription or get an Rx on-premises.
Once the lens details are determined, opticians show the range of frames that go well with the recommended lenses. When the lenses come back from fitting, the
optician installs the lens in the order and the order is marked as
Ready For Delivery.
Key Features
Grouping relevant fields together reduces the fatigue of lengthy forms.
The keypad concatenates values removing the need for any table lookups.
Iconography simplifies the UX for non English speaking users.
contact lenses
Contact lens sales generally account for about 15-20% of the total revenue for an optical store.
Contact lenses need to be purchased in quantities that depend on the replacement schedule prescribed by the optometrist.
Key Feature
I used a 3x3 grid icon set to help opticians quickly find the replacement schedule they are looking for instead of having to read labels.
Settling invoices
When an order is created for a customer, the customer is given an order copy as proof of the order. However, this is not proof of payment. When an order is placed, it typically goes to another location for fitting and polishing.
Only when the order is marked as READY FOR DELIVERY, an invoice is generated and shared with the customer. When the invoice has been SETTLED, the order is handed over to the customer and marked as DELIVERED.
In the case of sunglasses or accessories where there is no fitting required, invoices are generated along with the order form and settled on the spot.
Deploying and Listing the App
Android Play Store
Getting listed on the Play Store was pretty straightforward, especially compared to the long and painful process of getting approved and listed on the App Store.
Banner ad for the Google Play Store lists all the main features of the app along with screenshots of some of the main screens that we thought would resonate with users.
APPLE APP STORE
Submitting the app to the App Store for the initial V1 deploy was a very tedious process that started on December 4, 2024, resulted in multiple Rejected versions, and finally got the Ready to Distribute status on January 28, 2025, three days before the Optika 2005 expo started.
Below is a realistic depiction of the calm, reserved relief I felt after.
A large number of eggs were broken to make this Apple approved omelette.
Results
We launched the ASIRA Optician App on February 1, 2025 at the Optika Conference 2025, India's largest optical expo getting 120 paid annual subscribers within three days. From mid-February to early September 2025, the installed audience fluctuated mostly between 250 and 280 users for Android and around 180 and 200 for iOS users.
After mid-September 2025, there was a slight downturn in Android growth, with installs generally staying between 200 and 220. As expected, the download and usage of the Android app is more than double the downloads for iOS.
Downloads from the Google Play Store since Feb 2025
Lifetime downloads from the Apple App Store since Feb 2025
Conferences
We launched the ASIRA Optician App at Optika 2025, India's largest optical expo. During the 3 day event, we were visited by over 500 people, of which 120 bought an annual subscription on the spot. International brands such as Hoya and Essilor approached us for partnerships to equip their teams of opticians with the app.
Learnings
CODED and deployed my first React Native app
Learning how to work with Expo/React Native, Tamagui and the Android and iOS environments was a significant challenge. Since all the functionality in the app is driven through ASIRA Clinical APIs, I had to rewrite code to enable token based authentication and validation of API requests coming from the app.
Rural communities need GREATER ACCESS TO CHEAP TECHNOLOGY
At Optika 2025, I met with many lower grade optical store owners that were frustrated that going digital was out of their reach. They were not able to compete with large chains like Lenskart, Lawrence & Mayo, etc, and eventually had to sell their business or take loans to survive.
Having access to cheap technology is essential for small businesses and mom-and-pop stores to compete with larger chains and retaining more customers.
Users need to be "nudged" to build habits
Within three months of launching the app, we noticed that the number of orders being placed was reducing. We learned that many users added a few orders in the app, but eventually went back to their existing paper based systems, since it was a system they were already familiar with.
Speaking with customers we discovered that though they found the app to be easy to use, they either did not have the time to explore all the features, or bought the app for the novelty of the app but are happy with their existing systems.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Optical Market team for partnering with us to get the ASIRA Optician App out in the market. Their deep knowledge and network in this space is driving the awareness, discovery and adoption of the app. I would also like to thank my partner, Isha Dave for managing the clinical side of ASIRA while I focussed on designing and building the app.
VISIT ASIRA OPTICIAN
Frankensteined in Mumbai.
Fueled by YouTube, 90s cartoons & Heavy Metal.
