Henry Lee
Information
Publications

Industrial Design
  1. Gravel Travel
  2. Wiley Wi-Fi Phone
  3. Switchpod Tripod
  4. Noctive Sleep Aid
  5. Zenith Air Pollution
  6. Breger Birdhouse
  7. Walnut Ice Cream Scoop

UX & Graphic Design
  1. Atlas A.I. Chatbot
  2. Creative A.I. Site
  3. Isla Porter Site
  4. The Plains Identity / Site
  5. Zenith Air Pollution
  6. Myna Bird Media App
  7. Academic Abstractions Site
  8. Conserve Utah Valley Branding
  9. Owlet App Exercise

Design Research + Writing
  1. Gravel Travel
  2. Zenith Air Pollution
  3. Design Research Methods
  4. The Academy (MFA Thesis)
  5. MemoryFull? Conference
  6. LearnxDesign Paper
  7. Shrink Wrap Zine

Speculative Design
  1. Interspecies Knowledge
  2. The Academy (MFA Thesis)
  3. Academic Poetry Zine
  4. Product Ritual Circles
  5. Medicine Cube
  6. Bee-Hive-Way

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Henry Lee
 Information
Publications

Medicine Cube (Speculative Design + Design Research + Industrial Design)

I was assigned the task of reimagining the medicine bottle for a speculative design sprint, employing rapid secondary design research and resulting in industrial and graphic design outputs.

Although the brief began with material waste concerns in regards to used medicine bottles, the speculative artifact I envisioned focused on the user experience in addition to the environmental and material concerns.



Design Research:

For this project I relied heavily on secondary research due to time constraints. Existing research I reviewed pointed towards the difficulty of certain individuals and groups being unable to open child-resistant (CR) prescription medication bottles. 





After reviewing existing research and conducting contextual inquiries I found a number of issues with current prescription medicine bottle designs that I addressed, including:

  • Lack of hand grip and stability due to cylindrical form
  • Inability to identify medication without opening (due to tinted plastic).
  • Too many tablets/pills falling out due to wide opening.
  • Difficulty reading existing typography.
  • Inability to recylce plastic materials.
  • The cap falling to the floor.

Based on all of these issues I decided to sketch out a few simple changes, and eventually ended prosing this design:



Industrial and Graphic Design:

For the redesign I proposed using clear glass as a material. Glass can be fully sanitized and reused, and being able to see through the glass to the medicine within helped to confirm that it was the proper pill. A fully rectilinear shape allowed for easier grip when attempting to open the container. The corners were particularly helpful. In addition, a rectilinear form kept the container from rolling around and allowed for easier storage:



The cap itself only opens halfway, so that the medicine does not spill out at once, making it easier for those with dexterity issues to slowly empty the needed amount:



The medicine cubes can be stored in multiple ways, including sideways so that the type is much easier to read at a glance, instead of the sideways orientation of the type on traditional prescription medicine bottles:



In regards to graphic design, the change in type, to Verdana, improved legibility and saved space. A restructuring of the most important information needed was displayed on the front, while the rest was relegated to the labels underneath:



Finally, the cap itself does not actually come off when opened, resulting in fewer dropped caps and the need for certain groups and individuals to retreive them:


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