Prescription Medication Bottle Redesign

Running Head: Prescription Medication Redesign
Prescription Medication Bottle Redesign
Mithila Khare, Zoltan Pukanecz, Joshua Espinoza-Stacy, Ali Chaudhary
North Carolina State University
April 17th, 2019

Prescription Medication Bottle Redesign 2
Table of Contents
Abstract 3
Part I: Evaluation 4
Section 1: Overview of the System 4
Section 2: User Description 4
Section 3: Points of Interest 6
Section 4: Issues found in preliminary analysis 7
Section 5: Proposed redesign 8
Part II: Redesign 10
Section 1: Proposed Redesign 2 10
Section 2: Comparison to Original 12
Section 3: Evaluation Plan 14
Participants 14
Materials 15
Results & Design 16
Part III: Test and Report 17
Section 1: Results 17
Section 2: Discussion 19
Section 3: Conclusion 21
References 22
Appendices 25
Appendix A 25
Appendix B 27
Appendix C 27
Appendix D 28
Appendix E 28

Abstract
Taking an incorrect medication is a simple mistake, but can be fatal. Most US
prescription medications come in a cylindrical, orange bottle with a child safe lid. The labels are
all printed with a small font, and very similarly, with little coding used to differentiate different
types of information. This leads to a lot of users-- mostly elderly users-- to make errors in taking
the correct medication or the correct dosage. As a group, we decided to redesign the standard
prescription bottle label to be more legible and easier to read. Furthermore, we also made some
suggestions to change the standard prescription bottle. We made two main variations of the
original prescription bottle label. Our initial design used a combination of size and color coding,
as well as symbols to help the user understand when to take the medication. We released a
survey in which we asked users questions about both the original and the redesigned label. They
were also asked to evaluate how easy it was to find each label’s information using the SUS
method of scaling. Although the font and print were bigger and more organized, the initial
redesign had too much coding and symbols, which ultimately confused the users who were used
to using the standard prescription bottle. In our final redesign, we removed most of the color
coding, but made the “usage” and the “Important Information” a red font. The rest of the
information was demarcated with a line by type of information. Each piece of information was
labeled, such as “Expiration date”, “QTY”, etc. Furthermore, we added the label to a clear
rectangular bottle, since we felt that users would find it easier to read a label on the flat surface.
Using a survey similar to the one used for the initial redesign, we found out that the final
redesign was better received. With further research and design, the final redesign of our
prescription bottle label may be much better than the one currently available in the market.

Part I: Evaluation
Section 1: Overview of the System
The current system of people receiving their prescribed medication has many issues. The
most noticeable problem is that people do not take their medications properly. In fact, according
to a study in the journal Clinical Toxicology, researchers studied data collected from poison
control centers across the United States, and analyzed incidents that happened outside of
medical centers that also resulted in serious medical outcomes. Over a 13-year study, 67,000
errors occurred, and the number of cases doubled from 3,065 in 2000 to 6,855 in 2012.
Cardiovascular drugs were responsible for one in five medication incidents and resulted in two-
thirds of all drug related deaths (Columbus, 2017).
While some solutions, such as keeping a weekly pill boxes or daily reminders, can be
helpful, the main source of the problem stems from the pill bottles themselves. Currently,
prescription labels are printed very similarly regardless of the use of the medication. Each label’s
medical information uses small black print with very little way to emphasize what information is
critically important, such as the medication’s name and description. The labels tend to violate
intelligibility and similarity, which are important principles of static displays. As a group, we
aim to create a redesign of the prescription bottle label and make it more patient friendly.
Following the principles of static design, critical information such as doses per day and what
each drug is for will be heavily emphasized on each label.
Section 2: User Description
Prescription drugs are used by anyone who needs help for any medical ailment as seen fit
by a doctor. However, a large amount of the adults who use prescription drugs are above the age
of 80. Once an average adult is above the age of 70, their overall health may begin to

deteriorate, causing them to need and use more prescription drugs (Dennis, 2015). Therefore, the
primary focus of our users are senior citizens.
There are a few characteristics that come as the average person gets older in life. At
approximately age 40, most people need reading glasses, and at age 60, cataracts may begin to
affect the average person's vision. People usually begin to experience a loss of hearing and lack
of strength/stamina once they reach the age of 60. Finally, while some diseases are not certain,
they are more likely to occur with age, and the best examples of this are hypertension and
memory loss (Marill, 2011). Many of these factors can negatively affect how an elderly person
can take their medications, as they may forget to take them or be negligent in completely reading
the label printed on the bottle.
The major difficulties of the elderly taking their prescription drugs is correctly reading
the label. The label has information such as the directions for use, appropriate cautionary
statements, name and strength of the drug, and the date of the prescription (Pharmacist FAQs).
With many prescription drugs bottles and labels looking similar, and when the elderly people’s
vision starts to decline, this is what leads to many accidental drug usages. They cannot tell what
to take and when to take the medicine. Therefore, they will need assistance on the prescription
labels to determine what information is the most critical. The most important information is how
to take the medication, how often to take the medication, and the purpose of the medication.
Using various font sizes, colors, and boldness can be used to emphasize this information along
with proper placement on a label. Common symbols may also be useful to remind a patient what
the drug is for, when it needs to be taken, and how it should be consumed (with food, with water,
etc.)

Section 3: Points of Interest
We are interested in this system because a large percentage of Americans, nearly 3 in 5
(Dennis, 2015), regularly take prescription medication and deal with the packaging daily. In
addition to a large impact, making changes to pill labels is cheap, simple, and relatively easy to
test for effectiveness. The implications of improper design include under/over dosage which
could lead to illness or even death. The BMC Health Services Research conducted a survey of
random Americans who regularly took medication for chronic illness in 2009 (Gadkari &
McHorney, 2012). 70% of respondents reported they forgot to take medication at some point in
the last 6 months. The primary reason being forgetfulness, but interestingly 22% forgot because
they were ‘careless’ at times. ‘Careless’ is left vague in the study, but from Norman's “Design of
everyday things” it is understood that humans often blame bad design on their own inability or
carelessness, and we believe that the medication label is a strong candidate for bad design which
causes humans to fail in taking their medication (Norman, 1990). A survey of 12 trials completed
by Cochrane library studied the results of participants using reminder packaging for 30 days
(Boeni, Spinatsch, Suter, Hersberger, & Arnet, 2014). Reminder packaging included the physical
compartmentalization of drugs or simple infographic additions to remind users when and how
much of each drug to take. Unfortunately, only an 11% increase in pills taken was noted, which
is still significant for such a small and cheap solution. Figure 1 shows a reference card used in
one of the Cochrane Library trials, in which reminder symbols are used to help patients. Another
problem with the pill label system is failure to abide to important warnings which can result in
unwanted health side effects. A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison
experimented with various label designs to convey warnings with different emphasis
(Shiyanbola, Smith, Mansukhani, & Huang, 2016). Patients in the study responded positively to

certain traits. As a part of our project we can experiment with such designs and increase
readability of warning signs. In summary, equipped with our knowledge of design psychology,
we believe we can make cheap and simple improvements to the prescription label to better the
lives of millions of daily prescription drug users.
Section 4: Issues found in preliminary analysis
The flow of tasks required for users to take prescribed medication is as follows: open
medicine cabinet, identify proper pills to take, ingest pills. It’s within the identification task
where most errors occur, and these errors are usually made by older users (above the age of 65).
Identification is difficult because all prescription bottles usually follow the same format and
design. A lot of prescription labels look extremely similar,
as well as the bright orange bottles that are used to hold the
medicine. The labels usually have a similar layout or have
a simple black and white text, and there is usually little to
no distinction between the font and size of the medication’s
name, patient’s name, doctor’s information, side effects,
etc. The names are long medical jargon that is usually
difficult to recognize by the average patient. Furthermore, once the medication itself is identified,
additional information such as dosage and time of day to ingest is hard to identify as well
because of small black font. This makes the process of choosing the right pill difficult, especially
if the patient has multiple prescriptions to take, and is usually the case with many older patients.
The lack of large font, color, and images in pill labels make the identification task difficult.
Figure 1

Section 5: Proposed redesign
The current prescription pill bottle label is a source of difficulty in the lives of people all
over the United States. To address this problem there is a variety of redesigns that must take
place. The multiple aspects of static displays will be considered in our redesign. One of the
biggest areas of concern is a standard of identification for when a dose should be taken. Most of
the generic prescription labels indicate when to take the medicine solely by typed out
instructions. To address this component of the issue there should be standard symbols used for
prescription medicine to indicate when the medicine should be taken. The symbols should be
universally understood and should indicate times such as ‘Morning’, ‘Afternoon’, ‘Evening’, and
‘Bedtime’(La Caze, 2018). Included with the new symbol should be a color-coding scheme that
is easy to understand and supports the time of day the symbol is meant to communicate to the
user. Another issue that we want to address is the use of small text on the label. To address the
issue there should be standard sized text that is used for all medicines. The enlarged text should
apply to the name of the medicine, the patient name, and the frequency that the medicine is to be
taken. This increase in text size will address all components of the issues derived from small text.
These three solutions will be the first step in the label redesign and as a basis we will use the
CVSPharmacy label redesign which can be seen in figure 2, above (Brennan, 2018). With this as
our base model we will aim to include other aspects which will aid in the user friendliness of the
label. The whole idea of patient centered label is something that we will aim for in the label
redesign. An example of this can be found in figure 3, below (La Caze, 2018). The redesign will
aim to reduce the medical jargon that is used on prescription labels, at least in the parts of the
label that need to be easily understood by the user (La Caze, 2018). The language should be

in layman's terms where anybody can understand things like the warnings, the instructions and
any other pertinent information.
Additionally, a standardized color-coding symbol system for the category that the
medicine is a part of will help address the issues that someone may face when they have multiple
bottles that all look the same and have similar names. This part of the redesign would be a
colored symbol that could immediately distinguish one bottle category from another. To portray
these proposed changes of the prescription label there is an image of a redesigned label in the
appendices section(Appendix B).
In the low fidelity mockup of
the redesigned prescription label, the
important information that is usually
on every prescription bottle is in a
smaller font. This information tells
the patient some of the more severe
side effects of the drug. All this information is
on one side of the label, keeping it in one
place. The name of the drug and the overall
description of the medication are in a large
bold font, as both are equally important to the
user. Most people may not know what medical jargon is, so a large description allows the patient
to easily identify the medication they need. The instructions are paired with well recognized
symbols that instruct the user to take the medication in the morning and with food. The symbol
of the heart suggests that the medication will treat the patient’s heart condition. Information
Figure 2

about the prescriber, pharmacy, and manufacturer are written in one column of the label. The
most important part of this side of the label is the telephone number, which will be called in case
of an urgent question. A description of what changed from what our group considers the
‘normal’ prescription label and the redesigned label is detailed above. The justification for each
change is also explained. The final redesign can be seen in Appendix B of the appendices.
Part II: Redesign
Section 1: Proposed Redesign 2
Nearly 33% of the patients who took our survey stated that the current prescription label
was easier to read than our proposed redesign. One commented that the current prescription
label was “easier to read since we were used to reading such labels and know where to find all of
the information.” Another commented that the symbols that were used to signify that the
medication be taken with food and in the morning were not conducive, but rather made the label
more confusing. This suggests that the information on the redesigned label should follow the
same order and position as the information on the current label. This way, the patients who use
the redesigned label will not have to learn a new format, as they will be used to the old label’s
format. The redesigned label will still utilize larger fonts, but will not have a multicolored font,
since that can cause confusion as well.
Target’s ClearRx System designed by Deborah Adler utilizes similar fonts and colors as
most prescription labels found in pharmacies country-wide. However, the bottle itself is wedge
shaped, allowing for easier storage in medicine cabinets. The prescription bottles come with
personalized color coded rings so that patients can easily recognize their own medication in a
shared medicine cabinet. Furthermore, it comes with a label magnifier that allows patients to
enlarge the print on their own (A Clear Winner, 2012).
Figure 3

Our initial redesign (Appendix B) had larger fonts and multiple colors to demarcate
which information was the most important. To utilize size coding, we made the label more
confusing since many pieces of information were in a larger font, making the label
jarring. Therefore, we will focus on demarking different types of information with lines, rather
than colors or fonts. Instead of having the label be stuck on a cylindrical bottle, we will suggest
pharmacies use a rectangular bottle so that the label lays flat on the bottle. The bottle should be
made from a clear, colorless plastic so that the patient can see what tablets or capsules are inside.
One label will have the main information for the patient and the other label will have the
emergency information. There will be places on different sides of the bottle.
Using our new prescription label design (Appendix C), the step-by-step process of taking
prescription drugs daily will be easier and less prone to error for millions of people. Our design
first and foremost has a unique wedge shape which will allow for easy storage and helps prevent
drugs from being misplaced and lost. The other important redesign characteristic we made was to
separate each section clearly with solid lines. This allows the user to quickly access key
information from different sections, especially after a few days of practice because it’ll become a
subconscious act. A typical series of actions one may use to successfully take their prescriptions
is as follows.
The user simply needs to look at the sections in chronological order from top to bottom.
The first action would be a quick glance at the prescription name, located at the top of the label
for easy access. If you have a spouse, or other housemates, it’s imperative to take medicine only
prescribed to you, therefore the name is the most prominent field on the label. The second
section contains the medical name of the drug in bold, but if that’s too complicated to understand
the third section right below contains an easy to interpret, bold and red, description of the

treatment type. The combination of section two and three serve as helpful signifiers utilizing
bold and colored text to insure the user takes the correct medication. The next step would be for
the user to look down at section four which contains instructions for proper ingestion. The
number of pills to consume, what time of day it should be taken, and how it should be taken in
relation to food are all highly visible and legible inside section four. For a user taking their
prescriptions daily, that is all the information they need to successfully, and safely, take their
medication. All it requires is a quick scan of the top four sections which are conveniently in
logical order. For important information that isn’t necessary day-to-day, a second label on the
pill bottle contains the typical warnings and side-effects. This second label has a bold and
colored “Important Information” heading as well as bullet points to maximize readability. The
splitting up of sections, the logical ordering of the sections, and the existence of two separate
labels follows the suggestions of a clinical study where patients preferred “... information to be
organized in a schematic way, with information about the drug, the directions for use and its
benefits followed by warnings and side effects.” (Shrank et al., 2010) which resulted in
improved answering time and accuracy by elderly patients according to the study.
Section 2: Comparison to Original
The “original” design of a prescription label can vary depending on the pharmacy
providing the medicine, but a majority of the labels consistently lack in key areas that should
make the labels easier to read. The prescription label that was chosen to be the “original” can be
seen in Appendix D. The original has relatively small font when considering the importance of
some medications and the fact that the people taking the medicine may have poor vision. The
original is also using only black font color throughout the label. There is no significant efforts to
divide the different types of information that is conveyed by the prescription label on the original

design. Results from a study performed at Western University Health Sciences found that
patients desire better organization of the label along with the increase in font size (Zargarzadeh
and Law 2011). A standard bottle is also established for comparison. The standard bottle is a
cylindrical plastic bottle and orange in color.
When comparing our redesign to the original there are a few key areas that stand out. The
first is the use of font size and coloring. The final redesign can be seen in Appendix C. The
most important information on the label is indicated by a larger font size than other information
on the label. The print is also bolded and colored to add another feature that will make the
information easier to identify by the user. In the original, the name indicating who the medicine
is for is only slightly larger than the rest of the text. In the redesign a larger font was used to
make identification easier. Another area of the prescription label the redesign addresses is the
name/dosage of the medicine and a simple description of the type of medicine. The name/dosage
of the medicine is in large bold font and the description is in font larger than some of the other
information and in a red font color. The next problem that the redesigned label undertakes is the
lack of clear division between sections of the prescription label. The redesigned label has lines
that clearly separate each section of information on the label. This is different from the original
where no lines were used to separate each section of the label. The redesign will also include
recommendations to use a rectangular shaped bottle so that the label will lay flat. The redesign
will have clear colorless plastic.
There are a variety of strengths and weaknesses that can be identified with the redesigned
prescription label. A strength of the redesign and the new features that were added is that it will
aid in quick identification of some of the first things a user might look for when making sure
they are taking the right medicine. In a household, where multiple people have prescription

medicine they store in the same location, information like the name of the patient and the name
of the medicine should be easily distinguishable. Another strength is the fact that the label is not
a complete overhaul of the original. The changes that are prevalent in the redesign are consistent
enough with the original label so that it does not cause confusion by the user. A weakness of the
redesign could be the implementation by the pharmacies. In the pharmaceutical industry it can be
difficult to execute change. Financial analysis would have to be done before a new label would
be implemented.
The main metric used to compare the redesigned prescription label to the original is the
ease of use. To be more specific the objective is for the user of the medicine to easily and quickly
identify their medicine. In a study done at Western University Health Sciences it was found that
the bigger font size and easiness to read was the most favored features with 27.2% and 19.8% of
responses, respectively (Zargarzadeh and Law 2011). Metrics such as the time it takes for a user
to identify the name of the medicine, who the medicine is for and what the medicine treats is a
crucial indicator on the success of the redesign when compared to the original. The redesign
should eliminate user frustration involved with important information being too small to read.
The redesign should also reduce the number of people who take the wrong medication because
the labels are similar and hard to distinguish.
Section 3: Evaluation Plan
Participants
The participants within our experiment were randomly selected people-- most of which
attended North Carolina State University. Thirty two people participated in our survey ranging
from the ages of eighteen to sixty four. There were no certain characteristics sought out for this
experiment, so all candidates who were asked to participate were eligible.

Materials
Participants were asked to complete a five section survey which was created using the
software of Google Forms. In the first section, participants were asked whether they take any
prescription medications. In the following section, participants were shown a picture of a typical
prescription label. It is shown in Appendix D. Once each participant had looked over the
prescription label, they were asked to find specific pieces of information on the label. Each
participant was asked to find the instructions on how to take the medication, the expiration date,
and the amount of pills in the bottle.
After the information was recorded, the participants were shown a picture of another
prescription label. However, this prescription label is the initial label redesign. Some of the
major elements in the redesign were to bold, color, and increase the font of the drug name, what
it treats, and how to take the medication. Small pictures such as what the medication treats and
how to take it are included as well. Participants were asked the same questions previously
mentioned in the previous section and what the medication is used to treat. The proposed
redesigned prescription label is shown in Appendix C.
In the next section, participants were asked which label was easier to find the information
requested. Also, they were asked to evaluate how easy it was to find each label’s information
using the SUS method of scaling. The scale ranged from one to five with one being very easy
and five being difficult. Finally, each participant was asked information about their age, whether
they’ve had mistakes when taking their medication, if they have trouble with their vision and if
they use contacts or glasses to help with their vision.

Results & Design
From the survey a variety of results were gathered and used to help finalize the label
redesign. 62.5% of participants regularly take prescription medications, and 22.6% of
participants have made mistakes when taking their medication. 15.6% of participants reported
having trouble seeing, and 48.38% of participants use either glasses or contacts to correct their
vision.
When participants were asked to find the requested information, most of them found it
correctly. 100% of all participants correctly identified the amount of pills in each bottle
regardless of which label was shown. However, when participants were shown the first label and
asked how to take the medication, there was some variance. While some responses were quoted
verbatim from the label, other responses just said “orally” or “by mouth”. While these responses
aren’t inaccurate, they aren’t completely true either. In total, 25% of responses weren’t
satisfactory. Similarly, when asked the same question but with the redesigned label, 15.625%
responses weren’t satisfactory.
Each label was graded using SUS questions, but due to the grading of our scale, each
response’s rating was subtracted from 5 to determine the true score. The overall SUS score for
the original label is 197.5, and the score for the proposed label was 202.5. When this information
is combined with the percentage of information correctly identified, the redesigned label showed
to have more effective results. However, there are improvements that can be made to reduce
finding errors.
One of the most notable results was that both surveys had issues with identifying the
correct use by date. Both labels used the date format of Month/Day/Year, and this format can

cause confusion due to other countries using the format Day/Month/Year. This lead to 16.12% of
participants misidentifying the use by date on the original label and 9.67% incorrectly identifying
the use by date on the redesigned label.
The final design that will be used will be an adjusted version of our proposed redesign as
shown in Appendix C. All dates will have the format of Month, Day, and Year in order to
eliminate any vagueness. The medication treatment will be in a bold red font to contrast from the
black font to insure everyone can easily read it. Other important information will be in a red font
as well to distinguish it.
Part III: Test and Report
Section 1: Results
The primary measurement of our testing procedure was time. By measuring the time it
took to retrieve various information we were able to determine which label has a better design. A
lower time result indicates better accuracy and error-free interpretation because errors and
confusion significantly increased time taken by participants. The original prescription label took
a total time of 20.41 seconds to interpret while the redesign took 15.87 seconds. This is a
significant 22% reduction in time. Because we recorded the individual question response time we
have some insight on what specific factors allowed our label to have better design. This
experiment is similar to one conducted in 1999 where researchers timed how long it took
participants to find information on nutrition labels (Goldberg, 1999).
Identifying the patient name, the most important information when analyzing a
prescription label, took similar average time for both labels. The usage instructions of how many
pills to take and at what time of day also took similar average time. When asked about the
expiration date however, participants took 59% longer to retrieve the information on the original

label. This significant difference existed
because the original label lacked
conspicuity, legibility, and readability
for the expiration date. The expiration
date lacked conspicuity by being
awkwardly placed in the top-right
corner while the participants eye was
naturally more focused on the bottom-left of the label where the majority of other information
was. The original label also had bad legibility because participants likely had problems reading
the small and unbolded lettering. Lastly, the word choice used to represent expiration date was
“Use by” which proved difficult to interpret quickly by participants as expiration date. Because
of this lack of readability, participants were likely to take an extended amount of time analyzing
the label or respond with an incorrect answer. Our redesign label avoided these issues by
positioning the expiration date logically with the other dates, increasing the font size and adding
bold lettering, and choosing the phrase “Expiration date” to label the expiration date.
In addition to time measurements, another usability survey was given to participants to
determine ease of use. The calculated SUS
score for the original was 38 while our
redesign earned a 78 (Figure 5). According to
a study conducted by Bangor, Kortum, and
Miller regarding how to describe certain SUS
scores, the redesigned SUS score would be
Figure 4
Figure 5

described as “Good” while the original label would be described as “Bad” (Bangor, 2009). Our
SUS score agrees with our statistical time data, proving that our redesign was less confusing,
contributed to less error, and was easier to interpret.
Section 2: Discussion
In part 2 of this report the differences between the original label and second iteration of
our redesign is detailed. We felt that it was also important to discuss how we went from our first
redesign to our second redesign. The second iteration of our redesign was established after
gathering feedback about our initial redesign. The initial redesign can be seen in Appendix B,
while the second iteration of our redesign is in Appendix C. The initial redesign has a number of
issues that had to be addressed in the second iteration of our redesign. One of the main issues
that was brought to our attention was the symbols used on the initial redesigned label. The intent
of the symbols was to reduce the number of words on the label and make it easier to quickly
identify when to take the medicine, if it needed to be taken with food and the category the
medicine fell into (ex: heart medicine). During the first round of testing it became immediately
obvious that the symbols created confusion instead of making the label easier to read. Another
problem with the first redesign was the amount of change that was made when compared to the
original. Participants are familiar with the original label and even though it has a design problem,
people still preferred it over our first redesign. The main reason was because the first redesign
would require time to get used to and people would have to learn the standard symbols. There
would be a learning curve for users to fully utilize the changes made in the first redesign. With
this in mind, our group decided to design a label that would be similar enough to the original that
people would feel comfortable with the changes. The alterations that were made were intended to
enhance some of the features that are on the original label and add features that were obviously

lacking. We tested the second iteration of our redesign and decided to move forward without
making any additional changes to the label.
The goal of the redesign was to make a more accessible label for prescription bottles to
account for the human error of misreading a prescription. Our redesign is highly effective since
it combines the positive qualities of the original prescription label with size and color coding to
make the label more legible and readable. We also demarcated each section of information with
bold black lines so that the user would be able to find the information more easily. We conducted
several surveys about our redesign and received fairly positive feedback. From the surveys, we
found that most preferred the redesigned label to the original label. Those who favored the old
label still took a shorter time to find information on the new redesigned label.
As we moved forward with the test and report stage the only change came in the bottle
that we used to test the label. In order to make the label easier to read a bottle that had flat edges
was used for testing. The label lays flat on the sides of the bottle so the user does not have to
struggle to read the text on the label. A traditional prescription medicine bottle is round so the
label runs all the way around. This can sometimes cause difficulty in attempting to read the label.
If we were to take this redesign further, we would apply the labels to rectangular bottles
with a child safe cap. During her survey, one user, a registered nurse, commented “the redesign
is great, but it would definitely be crucial to design bottle that has a child safe cap.” Further
research and design would be needed to design such a bottle, since it is not currently readily
available.
The only change we feel is necessary to our final design is a tamper proof and child safe
bottle lid. The lid on most prescription bottles requires the user to push down on the lid and then
turn. This prevents children from opening the bottles and misusing the medication.

Furthermore, the size of the bottle can be adjusted based on the amount of medication prescribed
to the patient.
Section 3: Conclusion
The system chosen to redesign was reading prescription label. After an analysis of the
current system, it was discovered that over a 13 year study, 67,000 errors occurred and the
number of cases doubled from 3,065 in 2000 to 6,855 in 2012. While 3 in 5 people take
prescription drugs, the current prescription labels tend to violate the principles of static design.
In the first label redesign, certain aspects of the label were given a larger font. The name
of the drug, the name of the patient, what the drug treats, and how to take the drug were placed in
the center of the label with the largest font. The name of the drug and what the drug treats were
in the font colors blue and red respectively to make it distinct among the all black font. Picture
labels were added in the middle area underneath the instructions on how to take the drug in order
to provide a visual aid for patients. Remaining information such as the expiration date and
important information were provided on opposite sides in size 12 font. A survey was sent out to
32 participants comparing the redesigned label to the original label. The survey asked
participants to find certain pieces of information on each label, and at the end of the survey, they
were asked to rate how easy it was to find each information on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being very
easy and 5 being very hard. Overall, the new design was more effective than the original design
but not as effective as we would’ve liked. 40.6% of participants found it easier to use the current
prescription label, and 15.6% of participants didn’t correctly identify how to take the medication.
With these results combined with the redesigned SUS score being only one point higher than the
original label, it was clear that a second iteration was needed.

With the second iteration, the picture labels were removed in order to give fonts more
room and due to the percent of incorrect responses, it was determined that the pictures didn’t
have a positive effect on helping participants find out how to take the pills. The dates were
changed from a MM/DD/YYYY format to a “Month, Day, Year” format in order to clear any
confusion on what date the drugs expire. The name of the drug, the name of the patient, what the
drug treats, and how to take the drug were still the largest fonts, but the name of the drug and
what it treats were bold and the drugs treatment was in a red font in order to differentiate it from
. To evaluate this design, each participant was shown each label then asked the same questions
on the survey. The redesign had a SUS score of 78 while the original had a score of 38.
Furthermore, the redesign had a 5 second lower average time than the original. With further
research and design, the final redesign of our prescription bottle label may be much better than
the one currently available in the market.

References
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Appendices
Appendix A
Hierarchical Task Analysis
1. Decide to take medicine

2. Walk to medicine cabinet (or table, or place where medicine is stored)
3. Mentally chose which medicine to take
a. Time based
i. Patient will mentally chose which medications needs to be taken every day
at a particular time
b. Ailment based
i. Patient will mentally choose which medications to take based on how they
are feeling
4. Look for the medication
a. Ailment Based
i. Find the bottle that treats the ailment
b. Time Based
i. Find the bottle with the medication you need based on its name
5. Read the instructions on how the medication should be taken
a. If “with food”, eat a cracker
b. If “with water,” drink water with the pill
6. Take the medication
Errors in taking the incorrect medicine and dosage occur during steps 3 and 4, since most
pharmaceutical drugs tend to have the same packaging and prescription labels, making it hard to
distinguish one from the other. The following low fidelity mockup uses various fonts, colored
lettering, and symbols to help older patients distinguish one medication from the other.

Appendix B
First Iteration of Prescription Label Redesign
Appendix C
Second Iteration of Prescription Label Redesign

Appendix D
Original Prescription Label Design
Appendix E
Second Iteration of Prescription Label Redesign with bottle

Prescription Medication Bottle Redesign

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