Dear Pharma Companies, I Tried Redesigning The Way My Nephew Drinks Vitamin
I’m spending a lot of time at home lately, which means I’m also spending a lot of time (building forts, racing toy cars, watching Peppa Pig) with my adorable, yet surprisingly-cunning 5 year-old nephew, Ayann.
One morning I was awakened by an orchestra of screams. Worried about what’s happening, I rushed to go downstairs only to witness a war. My older sister is having a really difficult time trying to give Ayann vitamin but my nephew, with all his elusiveness, is fiercely refusing. I asked my sister if it’s always like that but she told me that it depends on the elusive kid’s mood.
Here’s the backstory: My nephew is a very picky eater because he already lost all of his upper teeth as a side effect of the medicine given to him when he was battling pneumonia before. That means getting all the nutrients from the vitamins is very crucial for his growth and development, the problem is getting him to drink his vitamins is not that easy. Having that in mind, I decided to solve this problem by redesigning the way my nephew drinks his vitamin.
I asked my sister, she told me that she always give vitamins in the morning around 9 am. It’s been a hit and miss game so far and my goal is to lessen the misses. After observing the whole experience many times, I figured that there are three factors affecting the way he drinks the vitamin: taste, delivery, and look.
First let’s tackle the taste. No other way but to taste it myself!
Viscous, strawberry-flavoured liquid. I thought it would taste like cough syrup but honestly, it’s not that bad. I asked my sister if she tried mixing it with other drinks and she told me that she tried putting it in Ayann’s milk but sometimes he would notice the difference in the taste and not finish it. Wasted vitamin and wasted milk.
Next, the delivery.
I decided to try and incorporate play into the process of giving the vitamin. Like what I learned from my previous projects, instead of creating a perfect product to test your idea, it’s better to do rapid-prototyping and what better tool to use than… LEGO of course! Ayann is a big fan of cars, so I got some help from my friends in Octan to create a “delivery-truck” with a lot of movable parts to have a fun way of delivery. Here’s what happened:
Nothing like a plot twist in the end.😂 😂 😂
Maybe I just poured the vitamin too fast? Another factor might be that I didn’t give him water right after but the noticeable thing was that he didn’t hesitate at all to drink the vitamin. It might ended in a splash, but it’s showing signs of hope.
Lastly, the look.
That’s the measuring cup that comes with the vitamin itself and c’mon, it doesn’t look very appealing at all. It looks something straight out of a hospital. If I have a 3D printer, I would create cups that looks like animals or cars, something entirely fun!
But I don’t have a 3D printer. Since Ayann likes drinking juice, I had the idea of creating a mini juice box that will carry the cup inside. Aside from Peppa Pig, he’s also a big fan of Pororo so I decided to use the character.
Here’s the final product.
The result? Sometimes a get a resounding NO! but on good days I get a polite No. 😂
So far, what worked best is the fun way of delivery. Just like from the video, there’s almost no hesitation at all from my nephew to drink the vitamin. I’ll keep on iterating. I believe given a better look and if I continue incorporating play, it would result to the best experience of drinking vitamins.
A quick shoutout to pharmaceutical companies. I believe in the importance of giving nutrients to children and the least we can do is to provide the parents and the children an easy and fun way of doing it. I believe that my sister is not the only one having this kind of problem and I’m more than willing to help in furthering the research and in redesigning the whole packaging of the vitamins, specially the cup. :)
Do you have the same problem? Share them in the comment section below! :)
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it hit that heart button below, I would appreciate it a ton! :)
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