My Design Portfolio
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Water Bottle Medication

This project is to create a (TUI ) Tangible User Interface based water bottle to improve a child's motivation to take his medication on time.

Team Members: Veena  & Kyu

Product Info: San Francisco | Type : Team Work | Role : UX/UI Designer

 
 

Activity :

In this project we will be exploring how Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) could be used to improve patient adherence to their prescriptions, treatments and therapies. We want to find out how the special characteristics of TUI’s can be applied to the special problems of medical adherence, producing physical models of prototypical products that illustrate your concepts.

 

Persona:

Paul is just 8 years old and asthmatic. He wants to be in charge of his medication but his mum (Mary) isn’t sure he’s quite ready yet. He goes to a local school, which he attends every week-day from 9am - 3pm. Mary works till 5 pm, so Paul spends a couple of hours every afternoon with his friend Jack and his parents. Mary would love to see Paul make this next step to become more independent. She just isn’t sure if she can trust him just yet.

 

Design Research :

Analyzing the medical condition and its treatment method.

Problem : Allergic Asthma Condition

Causes: Cold, Dust, Pollen, Smoke 

Level: Mild/ Long Term Condition

Medication Prescribed: Corticosteroids( Anti-Inflammatory Inhalers)

Medication effect lasts up to: 6 Hours

Number of medication prescribed for a day: Inhale 3 times a day

 

User Experience Journey :

 
 

Brainstorming Ideas :

I did explore some Physical paper prototypes to understand the patients pain points by imagining situations for the persona.

 

Snack Box Medication :  In this prototype I thought the kid has to inhale the medicine to have his snack. Which reminds him of his medication and I thought it would be subtle enough for the kid to have the medication in an school environment and not forget about it. So the snack box can be opened only by inhaling the medication.                                                                               

Clock Pill Reminder : In this prototype the medication is filled in the two white strips alongside the clock. Based on a particular time reminder, the medicine will be pushed to the clock surface to have the medication. This could be done based on one particular pill that has to be consumed everyday.

Water Bottle Medication : This prototype represents how medication can be taken by two different straw mechanism, with a reward in it.

 

Iteration 1 :

We picked the water bottle idea and developed further on this.

In this process we tried to draw sketches in thinking what kind of reward system would be best, and what would be motivating for the kid to practice everyday to take his medication on time. This required us to combine a reminder system to the water bottle. Which should be subtle enough that it doesn't disturb the normal school life of a kid. 

 

Story Boarding

 

Prototype Iteration Design:

It shows how the idea is being represented by a keynote projection.

  • Morning 8.00 am, Kid takes medication at home with the help of mom

  • Timed Reminder at 3.00 pm, is designed with the water bottle

  • Flavor balls as Daily reward is released in the water to the kid once he inhales the medicine. 

 

This piece was created to project the Keynote presentation and overlay the idea of this medication water bottle.

 

Final Keynote Prototype:

 
 

Summary :

In this project, we have a musical reminder that goes on 3.00 pm, that was the only concern whether that will disturb other classmates of Paul. This takes of the idea of the subtleness. But, at the moment we are go heading with it imagining this bottle first solves the idea of helping a child to have his medication on time. Later, we would consider replacing the musical reminder, to a flashing light bottle, or a vibration, or keeping the colored straw medication up by default would remind the kid to have his medication at any point if he lifts the water bottle to drink water. And I believe the daily reward would be different everyday which motivates him to have the medication without fail.

As part of this project, it was very interesting and challenging to design a simple product for a kid who needed help to take his medication on time. Thus, Mary the mom feels happy about his son being independent at school to remind himself about his medication with the help of the Water Bottle Medication concept.