Empathic design - Giving medicines to children
Student project, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design London
The project is focused on the conflict between parents and children that don’t want to take their medicines. This is a difficult issue for both sides.
The main problem is that both parties don’t understand each other’s point of view.
-For a child, medicines look unattractive, they taste horrible, and they seem useless because children don’t feel any immediate effect. So they refuse to take them.
-For a parent, if their children don’t take medicines, it means that the child’s health condition will worsen and they will have to go to a doctor, and possible to a hospital. Most of the time, parents just force children to take medicines. But for a child, this can be really difficult. Even if parents have been children, and maybe they have passed through the same experiences, they can’t understand why children refuse to take medicines. What seems logic to an adult, children can’t understand. When they are sick, adults take medicines because even if they taste bad, grown-ups know that in the end these will improve their health. But children don’t understand this.
The main problem is that both parties don’t understand each other’s point of view.
-For a child, medicines look unattractive, they taste horrible, and they seem useless because children don’t feel any immediate effect. So they refuse to take them.
-For a parent, if their children don’t take medicines, it means that the child’s health condition will worsen and they will have to go to a doctor, and possible to a hospital. Most of the time, parents just force children to take medicines. But for a child, this can be really difficult. Even if parents have been children, and maybe they have passed through the same experiences, they can’t understand why children refuse to take medicines. What seems logic to an adult, children can’t understand. When they are sick, adults take medicines because even if they taste bad, grown-ups know that in the end these will improve their health. But children don’t understand this.
How can parents and children understand each other’s viewpoint, in order to be able to communicate in an effective way?
This project tries to make both parties come together and understand a bit of each other’s point of view. By analysing what adults and children do and don’t understand about this issue and about each other, the project has been developed in such a way that both parties were enabled both to visualise and experience the viewpoint of the opposite side.
The parents-medicines-children kit contains two interactive leaflets for each side: one for the parents and one for the children. Both the children and the parents can visualize, imagine and experience a little of each other’s perception, in order to make them understand each other.
The parents-medicines-children kit contains two interactive leaflets for each side: one for the parents and one for the children. Both the children and the parents can visualize, imagine and experience a little of each other’s perception, in order to make them understand each other.
The interactive leaflet for parents gives an idea of how children think through illustrations and text, by making parents aware about how medicines are seen by their children.
Even if an usual pill seems small and suitable for swallowing to adults, for the children the pill is really big.
By translating the proportions of the pill and a child’s hand to an adult’s hand, parents can have a clue about this. Furthermore, parents are invited to hold in their hand a pill simulating the translated proportion to adult’s size. In this way, adults can have a clue about how hard it is for children to take medicines.
By translating the proportions of the pill and a child’s hand to an adult’s hand, parents can have a clue about this. Furthermore, parents are invited to hold in their hand a pill simulating the translated proportion to adult’s size. In this way, adults can have a clue about how hard it is for children to take medicines.
This is just a step in making parents understand a little of how children see medicines, and why they refuse to take them.
children – medicines - parents
The interactive leaflet for children has many illustrations to make the information be easily understood by children as they usually watch cartoons and they are used with this kind of visual messages.
As little words as possible have been used, as some children may not yet know how to read, or don’t know the meaning of some words. The leaflet explains through illustrations why they have to take medicines, and what can happen if they don’t take them, giving children an idea of how adults think.
At the end, children can feel the experience of giving medicines to a toy showing the body that starts to function as soon as medicine is taken. By mimicking their parents that give medicines to them, and by seeing that medicine can make the body healthy, children can have an experience that provides a clue about how their parents think.
At the end, children can feel the experience of giving medicines to a toy showing the body that starts to function as soon as medicine is taken. By mimicking their parents that give medicines to them, and by seeing that medicine can make the body healthy, children can have an experience that provides a clue about how their parents think.
By bringing together two of the favourite things that kids like, toys and cartoons, children can imagine and experience in a game-like activity a little of their parents perception.
