Learning from the patients

This paper addresses the patient’s learning pathways, struggling with a medication treatment process at home; here, as a non-expert, the patient must manage the care procedures, practices, and objects. Starting from some empirical didactic experiences concerning the elderly’s therapies in daily lives, we focus on the gap between codified care models, as developed by pharma industries or incorporated in drugs, in their packaging, in the leaflets, in technological devices, and real users’ lifestyles. Evidence and examples documented through photos, interviews and questionnaires show how care information is interpreted, translated, and integrated by users who then apply it to medication (e.g., by changing the shape of the packaging or the drug itself or by adding short handwritten notes on the packaging) or care spaces. Here we highlight how design education based on observing natural user behaviour - not stereotyping the user - can open-up unexpected design trajectories in pharma, a domain in which companies pay little attention to daily therapeutic practices, habits, and complexity.