Better Experience #6: Designing Better Packaging for Medicines 💊😷

Small details that could save someone’s life

Better Experience Design is a collection of arbitrary encounters with everyday things that have given us either delightful or stressful experience.

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

A week ago, I went to a drugstore looking for medicine for my headache. The problem was when I try to find a right medicine for my headache, I can’t easily find it, because the medicine shelf contained numbers of variation medicine, and the medicine package itself cannot explain the function.

1. What is it and what is the purpose?

Choosing a medicine can be tricky because they each have a slightly different combination of ingredients. And as an ordinary common human who does not study pharmacy, I don’t know and don’t care about the ingredients of the medicine. But I realize that the medicine out there, almost and always show the ingredients as the main object in its package.

And the reason why the ingredients shown in the package is for the transparency of what is contained in the medicine. But does the consumer care about it? Well, in my case, I don’t care as long in the package I can find the information about what the medicine can do.

2. Why/When did I use it?

The medicine is used to relieve some sickness, and you can find some medicine easily in the drugstore or supermarket. And mostly really hard for the consumer to compare the medicine, and even worse the consumer might buy the wrong medicine!

A medicine shelf at a supermarket. (source)

3. Was it a delightful or stressful experience? Why?

So what I wanted to do was to buy the right medicine for my headache, but it was tough to compare the variability of medicine. The main reason is the packaging itself has terrible design and unnecessary information.

Variation of headache medicines.

Fortunately, after spending several minutes to decide which the correct medicine for my headache, I found one medicine that has a picture of people touching their heads, I assume that one is headache medicine, so without hesitation, I choose that one.

The one that I chose!

*disclaimer: this is not our sponsor, just to visualize how creative the packaging is

Maybe, just maybe, with a little effort to think about the packaging design, it can make consumer directly know and help the consumer choose the correct medicine.

4. Can it be better?

Definitely! Here is how I would make the experience better:

The simple one puts the information about what medicine can do, and make it that as the primary information on the packaging.

Clear information on the packagings. (source)

5. What do you think?

We think this might make the better experience of the consumer to choose the correct medicine for their needs.

Let us know in the comments if you have any idea about how to make it even better and let’s discuss 😆

Thanks for reading! If you have any idea about what we should cover next, you can comment below / send us an email: hello@betterexperience.design !

Better Experience Design is a collection of arbitrary encounters with everyday things that have given us either delightful or stressful experience.