Kanoe
CLEAN Meds · Health Design Studio
Designing the service around
free essential medication.
Kanoe grew from a question about how people experienced a service providing medication free of charge. At the Health Design Studio, I led the identity and packaging direction, guided a team of undergraduate designers and researchers, and worked with the other graduate design leads on the service itself.
- My role
- Design lead · Identity and packaging
- Scope
- Research direction, service design and prototyping
- Status
- Proposal and prototypes
01 / Introduction
Starting with the problem, before choosing the form
At the Health Design Studio, the starting point was a problem to understand. The work could involve a service, a physical product or the information around it. We had to work out what needed to change for the people using a service and for the organization delivering it.
For CLEAN Meds, the brief involved branding and packaging for a service providing essential medication at no charge. Understanding that brief meant looking at how people discovered the service, enrolled, received their medication and asked for help. The Community Guidance Panel, patients and the pharmacy team brought different parts of that experience into view.
My part in the team
I directed the archetypes, art style and identity, and led the packaging design, drawing on my industrial product-design experience. I worked with the undergraduate designers and researchers to keep our choices connected to the research and co-design work. We developed and built the packaging prototypes together. The other graduate design leads and I shared responsibility for the service-design work.
02 / Problem
The problem
How could we develop an identity and packaging for CLEAN Meds that people felt comfortable accepting, while addressing accessibility, stigma and trust?
Providing medication at no cost addressed an important barrier. The way the service was presented could still leave someone feeling singled out, uncertain about its quality or uncomfortable sharing personal information. We needed to understand those concerns before deciding what the design should communicate.
03 / Research
Following the experience on both sides of the service
The team combined secondary research, interviews and co-design sessions with the Community Guidance Panel. We used journey maps, personas and stakeholder mapping to bring those perspectives together. I helped guide the research direction and used the findings to keep the identity and packaging work focused on the problems we were finding.
The synthesis connected practical concerns—how medication was packed, labelled and delivered—with questions about privacy, confidence and how receiving free medication felt. It also showed how much of the experience depended on what happened before and after opening the box.
Research synthesis · Selected detail from the original project board
Notes from patients, pharmacy and the service were grouped into themes. These are working observations and questions, rather than measured outcomes.
Making room for the pharmacy’s experience
The journey map followed people receiving medication as well as the pharmacist preparing it. For patients, it captured enrollment, the first delivery, clarification and refills. For the pharmacy, it included counting medication, preparing labels, packing and responding to questions.
The maps recorded concerns about sharing financial and health information during enrollment, understanding instructions and removing personal information from packaging before disposal. For the pharmacy, they recorded the work involved in labelling, packing and answering questions. Those details helped us consider privacy and clarity across the service, rather than only at the moment of delivery.
Pharmacist journey · Detail from the original map
The full artifact also records the patient journeys and their points of uncertainty.
04 / Reframing
The problem reframed
The challenge had grown beyond giving the service a new look. We needed the experience of discovering, receiving and using it to support the same values.
That meant asking how the name and tone affected trust, how packaging protected privacy, and how the proposed changes would work for the pharmacy. The framing connected our brand and packaging choices to the service around them.
The journey map also recorded worries about paying for prescriptions after the trial ended. That belonged to the wider service problem I worked on with the other graduate leads. It was a different question from what the identity and packaging proposal could address.
Trust and belonging
Explore a voice that felt credible and welcoming, without making people feel defined by needing free medication.
Privacy and clarity
Consider how medication and personal information were contained, presented and understood when the package arrived.
Service fit
Account for the pharmacy’s preparation and handling work alongside the recipient’s experience.
05 / Identity
Giving the team a direction to design against
I led the archetype direction so we could discuss the personality of the service in concrete terms. Our working directions included the Friend, the Guide and the Motivator. The Friend emphasized warmth, the Guide offered a calmer, more informative approach, and the Motivator focused on encouragement.
We explored how those qualities would show up in the voice, appearance and feeling of the service. Feedback helped us combine useful qualities across the directions, rather than treating one archetype as a fixed answer.
Brand-attribute exploration · Original project artifact
The team compared what each direction could offer and where it could feel overbearing, impersonal or too informal. Early boards include additional alternatives.
Testing a direction through different expressions
The team developed naming and identity explorations, including Junipir, Kanoe and Arora. Applying them to different communications made their tone and visual differences easier to discuss with the CLEAN Meds team.
Communication concepts · Alternative brand directions
Concept mockups made the differences in language, colour and imagery visible. They do not represent a launched campaign.
Kanoe became the final proposed direction, guided by equity, accessibility, community, humanity and quality. The panel’s preference for simplicity and a familiar teal palette helped shape the visual direction. I led the art direction and its application to the identity and packaging; naming and feedback were shared work.
06 / Packaging
Designing for patients and the pharmacy
I led the packaging design and built prototypes with the team. I brought my industrial product-design experience to the structure and handling of the package, as well as its appearance.
We explored the shipper, the internal stabilizing mechanism and the folding carton as related parts. The direction included a separate carton for medication and personal information, moving away from placing them directly into the shipping container with bubble wrapping.
The pharmacy workflow was a practical constraint throughout. Packaging had to accommodate medication and prescription information while remaining workable for the people preparing it. A reassuring opening experience for a patient would achieve little if it made the pharmacy’s job harder.
Exploring structure
Team sketches considered different ways to arrange the bottles, printed material and internal support.
Building the proposal
Physical mockups let us examine how the parts fitted together and how someone would open the package.
From the prototypes to the proposed system
The final packaging artwork shows the outer carton, internal bottle insert and opening tab as one system. The identity also extended to accompanying printed material, so the pieces people received could be understood as part of the same service.
Identity and packaging proposal
The visual direction carried across the package and its accompanying materials.
07 / Delivery
What we handed over
The handover brought together service recommendations, the Kanoe identity and the packaging proposal. It connected the work of the graduate leads, undergraduate designers and researchers with the feedback gathered through co-design.
The Community Guidance Panel’s feedback informed the direction, including its preference for a straightforward, professional presentation. That feedback helped us assess the proposal; it did not establish production readiness or a measured change in medication adherence.
I did not remain involved long enough to confirm later adoption. The work shown here is the proposal, its development and the prototypes we produced.
08 / Reflection
What I would carry into the next stage
This project brought service design and physical product design together. The research gave us reasons to reconsider the brief; the archetypes gave the team a shared direction; and the prototypes let us examine what that direction meant in a physical object.
The next stage I would want to test is a complete delivery, from preparing medication at the pharmacy to receiving and opening it at home. That would help us assess the proposed changes under everyday conditions, including handling, information clarity and privacy.
I would also want feedback from people beyond those already involved in the co-design work. Familiarity with the project can make a proposal easier to understand than it will be for someone encountering the service for the first time.
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