Solvay medication dispenser

Alfred van Elk: ‘This compact and environmentally friendly product has been designed to stimulate treatment perseverance by offering real advantages in its use. The product comprises a dispenser that uses a rotating disk that can hold a tablet cartridge. It is childproof, has a secure tablet order, a start day that can be set, and a visible day indicator with varying dosage schemes. All these aspects make it technically a complex product. The challenge then becomes to pare it down to the essence: not a trendy and dynamic object, but a product that does its job in silence.

Sometimes I really need such a complex commission, and I completely immerse myself. With the design of a product like this, it is obviously not about me as designer. This was a process with a large team; about 30 people in total were involved. This project not only made me grow as project leader, but also as designer.

In the end this product says something about the end user, and about all other stakeholders in the process: chemists, GPs, buyers, marketeers, engineers, and so on. I am very proud of the fact that in the end I succeeded in managing the project well and to design a product that does what it should do. That is an achievement for everyone involved. Wonderful: at some stage the first prototypes do the rounds, and everyone sees their own interests represented. In short: this design shows how a technically complex commission can be translated into a product that does its job in silence.’