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Tossing Your Tylenol: Supporting Sustainable Behavior in Medication Disposal Through Label Design

Pharmaceutical waste has proven harmful to society and the environment either stagnating in home medicine cabinets or seeping back into the ecosystem. This points to an unsustainable pattern of disposal of pharmaceutical waste. This paper presents the implementation of a user-centered design process...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 2023-09, Vol.67 (1), p.2466-2471
Main Authors: Renata, Vianney, Parker, Jah’inaya, Loganathar, Shanmugapriya, Kamaraj, Amudha V., Li, Mengyao
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Pharmaceutical waste has proven harmful to society and the environment either stagnating in home medicine cabinets or seeping back into the ecosystem. This points to an unsustainable pattern of disposal of pharmaceutical waste. This paper presents the implementation of a user-centered design process paired with a sustainable behavior paradigm to address barriers to the proper disposal of pharmaceutical waste. The design process revealed that a lack of awareness of proper disposal methods is a contributing factor to improper disposal. Labels with images highlighting different strategies for the proper disposal of medication were prototyped. A message meant to motivate the user to properly dispose of medication accompanied the images. Three types of motivational messages (eco-affective, norm-based, and social implication based) were presented to assess their effectiveness and preference. User testing revealed issues with label interpretability and a preference for social-implication-based motivational messages. A final prototype incorporating user feedback is presented.
ISSN:1071-1813
2169-5067
DOI:10.1177/21695067231192218