How can contraceptive packaging become more personalised to the user?
It’s estimated that approximately 22% of women taking the pill miss two or more per month (Rosenberg et al., 1998). Women with a higher knowledge of how the pill works, its benefits, side-effects and use were up to 6 times more likely to continue taking their pill compared to less knowledgeable women (Hall et al., 2014). Therefore by improving education of the pill, it can consequently improving the success rate of the contraceptive pill. However 40.4% of women in a medical study reported they do not read medical inserts because they are too long, confusing, rely on the trust of their doctor or don’t see the insert in the packaging. In most cases, the medical insert is the only piece of on hand information available when taking the pill.
The aim of this project is to improve medication adherence for contraceptive pills (OC) and educate users on how the OC works, therefore increasing the success rate through a particaptory study.
Design - Sophie Hague
Skills Used-
3D Modelling
Unity
Participatory Design
Participatory Study
To approach the brief, I have decided to take upon a participatory design study approach to optimise user experience and let the user decide how to improve medication adherence. I have decided that I will let my research guide my idea, therefore the main goal of the brief is to collect valuable information which will help inform my design decisions.
The first task was for the users to sort the information from the Rigevidon medical insert into level of what they deemed important. By sorting the headings and subheadings of most to least important it gave me an idea of what the user is looking for in the medical insert.
The second task was an ideation mashup taken from Ideo (Ideo, 2023). The idea was to bring unexpected things together to spark new ideas. The participant would come up with as many elements as possible for both ‘The steps you go through to take the contraceptive pill’ and also ‘things you could use to record the time’. Once they had done this they would combine items from the two different lists to develop new ideas.
The Idea
The phone case will act as the packaging, the idea is to create discrete packaging which is transportable, accessible and easily interchangeable to reduce waste.
The app is so users can track any symptoms and log the time they take their pill. By logging the symptoms or moods the idea is that it will correlate with information on the medical insert that is stored on the app.
A scannable blister packet. With each pill taken out it will set a countdown as to when the user needs to take their next pill which will promote adherence
Development- Phone Case
The idea is that the blister pack will be scannable, once a pill is taken out it will change the AR filter. The filter will alert the user as to how long they have left until their next pill. The phone will also vibrate when it's time, gently opening the pack enough for the user to open themselves.
Development- AR Filter
Here is the filter which will change depending on the pack and how many pills has been taken out of it.
Development-App
The app uses data from the participatory study to understand what information users would deem the most important. It gives the users the options to log any symptoms which will then correspond with the medical insert to highlight any trends.
There is a chat function so others can talk about any symptoms, experiences or feelings they might have.