Development of the Business Model and User Experience for a Pill Dispenser: A Designer Perspective

The elderly population has been significantly increasing all over the world, causing an emerging need to create products that facilitate the day-today life of this population and that prolong their independence in a domestic environment. This article focuses on the first phase of an investigation project which aims at creating a device that stores and dispenses pills automatically with the integration of a virtual assistant. In this first phase it was intended to define the user experience and business model for the product based on the state of the art, that addresses topics such as the problems resulting from aging, ambient assisted living, and current solutions available in the market for domestic environments, such as virtual assistants and pill dispensers. As a result, it was possible to determine that the product will have three type of user experiences, namely in the domestic environment, in hospitals and nursing homes/day centers/continuous care units and these experiences allowed it to define the business model much more clearly. In conclusion, this article will allow to proceed to the next phase of the project.