Pharmaceutical packaging design from a low-vision user perspective

Patients with glaucoma may suffer from loss of peripheral vision, blind spots, decline of contrast sensitivity, and blurry vision. Such deficits have negative effects on their ability to read and navigate visual material. To avoid medication errors, it is hence important that packaging designs for glaucoma medicine be designed to meet the patients’ specific visual needs. Despite that, pharmaceutical packaging is often designed to accommodate other needs than that of the end user.

Medication picking errors that originate in misreading of labelling and packaging are known to be caused by issues such as 1) small size and poor readability of printed information, 2) poor use or absence of colours to differentiate products, and 3) poorly designed or cluttered labels.

This presentation argues that these shortcomings may be the result of policies imposed by the European legislation for medical information design, whose guidelines are outlined without any focus on how they interact and how they affect individual user groups.

Based on findings from typeface legibility research and attention to the visual deficits of glaucoma patients, the presentation will look past the existing guidelines and propose new design solutions for the glaucoma eye-drop medication Latanoprost. Ensuring that only the most relevant information is shown, and that this information is legible, will make it easier for low-vision glaucoma patients to identify their medication and minimize the risk of picking errors.