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When Stores Have to Compensate for a Failure of Package Design
Shelf-and cart-mounted magnifying glasses for tiny pharmaceutical labels
If there's one failure of package design that seems to be consistent across brands, it's the microscopic fonts used on medicine labels. They provide crucial information on products often being purchased by elderly folk with less-than-stellar eyesight, but the brand name is always given way more real estate than the active ingredients.
Smart stores compensate. This Rite-Aid's solution: A shelf-mounted magnifying glass on a retractable line.
Image credit: Dooughnut
And this pharmacy in Germany features them on the shopping carts:
Image credit: Elke Wetzig, Elya Creative Commons/3.0 Unported
Perhaps design schools should teach courses in "Remedial Design," where students have to come up with low-cost, easily retrofittable-solutions to compensate for industrywide design failures.
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Comments
To be fair, there are many regulatory requirements (FDA regulation regarding label contents - for one) that are not optional. Then there are consumer requirements (size preference and as you point readability). Then there are product requirements (pharmaceuticals require certain packaging to maintain effectiveness until expiration). You should sit in a meeting where people are trying to design a drug label satisfying all these conflicting requirements.
Marc is absolutely correct. Labeling is regulated by FDA (US) and MDR (EMEA). Either stores accommodate larger packaging (and thus more waste) or they provide a magnifier.
this wouldn't be a problem if everyone simply wore their Opti-Visors all the time, like normal people.
The last image is actually in "Coop" is a Swiss grocery/department store. The item that is being modified is a piece of cheese.
To play devil's advocate here, stores shouldn't have to be held responsible to compensate for mandatory package labeling and/or those who do not wear proper vision correction devices when needed.