A few months ago I switched prescriptions from Walgreens to Target because of the great service I received at Target. Last week I received a new prescription in their new container and it is VERY impractical. The brochure they gave with the prescription tells how great the container is and that Target always want to be on the cutting edge of newness. The impractical container has several functional drawbacks:
If you happen to be unfortunate like myself and need to take 6-8 different prescriptions a day, its impossible to stack the new containers so they now take double the space.
The lid is on the bottom!!! Imagine the surprise when you think you have the lid back on and you go to put it away and pills fly out everywhere.
Pills get wedged in the bottom with the triangular bottom, I actually had to cut open the plastic on the bottom (which is very sharp when cut) to remove some pills that were wedged in.
I was mistaken when I assumed Target would like feedback, they replied with an email basically saying too bad thats all you get now. When I requested the conventional, functional, regular bottle on my next refill the pharmacists told me that they had some and checked with headquarters to see if they could take care of the customer and they were told that I did not get a choice I had to take the new wedge container. The pharmacists also told me that they had several customer complaints and they passed them on to their managers and then they were told that they had a bad attitude because they relayed the customers feelings. With all of this I feel like Target management is telling me that they don;t care about the customer and don;t really need my business - the higher-ups should learn from the people on the front line that deal with the customers.
bluefrog, thats a pretty insightful view on the new bottle. I first thought it was a nice improvement, but its seems in fixing some problems they created more. It also seems those issues would have cropped up and been addressed in user testing.
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This new design has been on pretty much every blog I read this week; amazed at how powerful a meme it is. Almost everyone only has good things to say about, it’s pretty exciting to get some real user feedback; although it’s disappointing to hear that your experience was negative (and you are so specific, that’s awesome) and that even worse, the company doesn’t seem to care.
Because I’m a blog nut of some sort, if it were my feedback, I’d type it up and grammar and spell-check it, and then I’d post it as a comment on every single blog I could find that talked about it. Use technorati or blogdex to find 'em all. Make some noise! An innovative design still needs to be tested and improved to become a success; perhaps with your feedback (through unconverntional channels, admittedly) you can contribute to the next iteration?
oh wow, why didn’t this stuff come up in testing? it’s kind of hilarious and infuriating at the same time. (and oddly, now i feel compelled to switch a prescription to target just to experience it myself! more $$ for them!)
ever since my michael graves coffee pot from target dribbled all over my countertop instead of pouring nicely i’ve been a little suspicious of target’s designs…
thanks for the feedback! i agree that you should keep hammering blogs and target themself with your thoughts and get them to admit they made some mistakes…!
It does seem strange that none of these flaws were discovered earlier, at least none of them will kill you.
Hopefully, this design is still somewhat fluid and Target is just using this as a stopgap or something. Or at the very least, other pharmacies will recognize the tremendous value in the new design and try to learn from its good points and bad points.
After all, there’s no denying that this new bottle is at least a step in the right direction.
it could even be that rectangular shape and have a flat top
also, did it say something about it storing both pills AND liquid meds?
if so, it so damn unintuitive to have a liquid filled bottle upside down in a med cabinet or what have you.
how about a snapple bottle or a milk jug that you store on its cap?
The pharmacists are gonna love to fill these, in the custom designed stands that must have been made to keep them upright.
I don’t like the color coded rings. Making the user responsible for keeping track of the content seems like trouble.
Is the cap the same “press down and twist” deal? From the picture I saw, it doesn’t look like there’s enough play.
There is a nice brief article in New York Magazine which shows how Deborah Adler came up with the idea for the “new and improved bottle” - including her earlier prototype
