Pharmacy Packaging Differentiation
usability testing, healthcare, differentiation
project lead, moderator, report writer
Bold insight
CHALLENGES
A large pharmaceutical manufacturing company sought to conduct a packaging differentiation study to assess the extent to which the proposed packaging for a brand new product and its supporting materials could be dispensed correctly and safely by intended users in the intended use environments.
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"How might we ENSURE DESIGN CHANGES TO PRODUCT PACKAGING ALIGNS WITH INTENDED USER EXPECTATIONS AND NEEDS FOR SELECTING THE CORRECT PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCT?"
Process
Our team conducted multi-room in-lab sessions with both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Each participant performed tasks expected of them in their normal roles while in a simulated pharmacy setting, designed by our team.
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Research sessions utilized simulated pharmacy shelves along with realistic distractor cartons and prescription mock-ups, with the goal of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians correctly selecting the target carton and product amongst the distractors.
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Distractor cartons were counterbalanced between each participant to mitigate for any potential biases. Distractor tasks such as the Ishihara and word searches were also conducted between differentiator tasks to build in a buffer and gather additional data that might provide context to participant selections.
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As this was a study conducted during the height of the pandemic, recruitment of healthcare professionals proved to be difficult. Our team implemented a recruitment plan that included both floater participants and an overrecruit for both user groups to ensure that we completed n=15 sessions each for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians.
analysis
After each participant completed all differentiation and distractor tasks, root cause probing was conducted for all differentiation tasks that resulted in use errors. Subjective and objective feedback on participant preference was also collected.
outcomes
All performance data, subjective, and objective feedback was complied and delivered in a full human factors report. Our reported insights provided the manufacturer a better understanding of risks associated with the design changes implemented for the new product packaging.
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A summary of the study results was also provided in service of a 510k submission for the product, its packaging, and supporting materials. The reported findings helped the manufacturer make design revisions ahead of packaging validation, which resulted in FDA approval of the new packaging for immediate use.