Empathy as Tool for Studying Chronic Disease Medicine Package Design for Chinese Elderly

Abstract

Background The elderly population expanded gradually in modern Asian society as a special community. China’s first blue book shows the high prevalence rate of chronic diseases in the elderly. Daily prescription medicines for chronic diseases, which differ from OTC (over-the-counter) medicines, are not required to be packaged or labelled under the mandatory prescription drug requirement in China. Existing package design need to be improved since there have been frequent reports of misuse and poisoning related to elderly users misusing the medicine due to unclear design. Empathic design offers a new vision for designers to meet the real needs of users by observing their behavior in a natural environment. The literature review shows extensive literature focusing on NPD (new product design) from the perspective of empathy. However, most of these studies were conducted in a Western social context. There is a dearth of research specifically addressing the Asian elderly. The main aim of this study was to develop a new empathic design process for identifying the problems in chronic disease medicine package for Chinese aging users, via the case studies from a design perspective. Methods This paper follows Leonard & Rayport’s empathic design process and is divided into two stages: problem identification（SPI）and problem solving(SPS). Moreover, a new SPI was developed using case studies to identify the problems in chronic disease medicine package. The KANO questionnaire, a half-opened interview and Contextual Inquiry (CI) were the main methods of data collection and analysis. Results The problems revealed in the questionnaire, interview, and CI were summarized and compared. The data shows that the interview found some hidden problems that the questionnaire could not done. Moreover, for the CI, the observation without pre-set questions filled the vacancy of knowledge brought on by the questionnaire and interview. The indirect methods in empathic design such as the empathic probe pack were not very effective for the subject, the elderly people did not respond positively when the researcher showed it to them. Conclusion A new 3-step SPI, which was effective in identifying the problems for Asian elderly users, was developed using case studies： pre-observation, observation and analysis of the collected data.