With Intent Season Finale: The ClearRx Medication System
November 12, 2024
In Episode 6 of the With Intent podcast, learn how a personal experience with her grandparents’ medication mix-up evolved into Deborah Adler’s groundbreaking pill bottle redesign.
Join hosts Thamer Abanami and Albert Shum as they explore the revolutionary ClearRx Medication System (which was used nationwide in Target pharmacies).
From Personal Experience to System Solution
One day, Deborah Adler’s grandmother took her grandfather’s medicine by mistake. Her grandparents’ initials were the same—and their pill bottles looked alike.
In this episode, featuring an interview with Deborah Adler, you’ll hear about her:
- Pivot from a thesis on curly hair products to prescription bottle design following her grandmother’s mix-up.
- Initial prototype development using dollhouse materials and tubing.
- Collaboration with industrial designer Klaus Rosberg, and other smart partnerships.
- Key design elements, including upside-down orientation for better grip and accessibility, color-coding system for family member identification, high-contrast label text for better visibility, and more.
The List
Inspired by ID’s award-winning list of 100 Great Designs of Modern Times (originally featured in Fortune magazine), this season of With Intent explored the most groundbreaking design solutions in recent history.
100 Great Designs of Modern Times
Fortune and ID first collaborated on such a list in 1959, and though some designs made both the original and the 2020 list, there were important differences in the kinds of designs that we now consider “great.”
Season 3 of the With Intent podcast examined select designs from the list, asking what the NYC Subway Map (E1), LifeStraw (E2), Raspberry Pi (E3), Zipline (E4), the OXO Good Grips Peeler (E5) and ClearRx (E6) could teach us so that we might design more responsibly in the future.
Clear RX was #37 in ID’s award-winning list of 100 Great Designs of Modern Times (originally featured in Fortune magazine).
Listen to Episode 6 of With Intent now. Make sure you click “Follow” on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to be notified when there are new episodes of the With Intent podcast available.