Pill Bottle Design
April 20th, 2005
A good article detailing the design process behind this new Target pill-bottle. A 29 year-old designer from New York tackled the problem because, “the drugstore prescription bottle… is not just unattractive, it’s actually dangerous. According to a recent poll conducted for Target, 60 percent of prescription-drug users have taken medication incorrectly.” Some gems from the description:
(4) Upside down to save paper.
Klaus Rosburg, a Brooklyn-based industrial designer hired by Target, came up with an upside-down version that stands on its cap, so that the label can be wrapped around the top. Every piece of paper in the package adds up to one eight-and-a-half-by-fourteen-inch perforated sheet, which eliminates waste and makes life easier for pharmacists.(7) Take “daily.â€
Adler avoided using the word once on the label, since it means eleven in Spanish.
Popularity: 6% [?]
April 20th, 2005 at 11:13 am
did they mention a control study, tho?
(i.e. did they check how many people take medicine incorrectly who get prescriptions from a regular pharmacy, because my guess is that it’s also pretty high).
April 20th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
“once” – love it!
April 20th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
i think the point was that people in general take the wrong medicine – not that they did so particularly at Target. I imagine the Target study was convenient since Target is manufacturing it. Or was done to justify said manufacturing after the fact.
But good call on close readings of the stats.
April 20th, 2005 at 5:53 pm
and come to think of it, the study doesn’t seem to be of Target, rather for them.
April 20th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
yeah ~ it’s just the scientist in me _
(statistics can be so evil sometimes)
April 21st, 2005 at 7:04 am
i agree, especially with economics, IMHO. Not to hate on economists, but often i think the field tends to conceive of the world just as physics students conceive of pool tables – like perfect spheres interacting on a perfectly planar, frictionless surface. I like some of the movements toward developing an economics of irrationality. I think the first step to understanding complex systems is to admit that they are ultimately incomprehensible. At least by any single system. Wasn’t that the gist of Goedel’s Theorem?
Okay, having exposed my extremely superficial knowledge of several fields, I’m going to conclude my post.
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:21 pm
hey ~ economists do it with models. : )
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:26 pm
but on a more serious note ~ what you’re talking about sounds a lot like the Goethean approach to science, which emphasizes viewing things in context, rather than isolated and simplified, to understand the world.