Ga-Ram Han // Thesis Progress 11.09

Outline:

Mission Statement
By determining the factors involved in prescription drug abuse, design will help alleviate issues associated with accessibility and recreational drug abuse. My goal is to find that niche, that will ultimately help those who really need help.

Hypotheses
Tackling the issue of non-medical use and abuse of prescription medication among teens and young adults.

Research methods
By using online statistics, talking to community centers and health services, talking with parents and teens, and reading articles. Also conducting surveys, and gathering information, and also testing out tools.

Analysis
I have noticed that peoples perception of prescription drug abuse can be either both casual or extreme. Most of the time, a person will agree that taking medication not prescribed to you is wrong, and technically it is considered illegal. There seems to be a disconnect from the association and harmful nature of prescription drug users, because most of them feel that it is a safer drug, which is entirely false

External Relationships
I have spoke with couple of parents, all of whom said they have never safe guarded their prescription medication. They also agreed that they would be devastated if they found out that their children were abusing medication to get high, and would do anything to prevent it from happening. I have also spoke with student health services, and got decent feedback. There needs to be more discussion later on.

Design opportunity
Prescription drug abuse dramatically increased during the past decade. In the last 10 years, the number of teens going into treatment for addiction to prescription pain relievers has increased by more than 300 percent. I can conclude that most of these cases are related to accessibility, and figuring out a way to intervene will help further my process.

Design Criteria
Not only does prescription drug abuse hurt the individual, but they have great affect on friends and family. These affects also trickle down into insurance providers, that need to figure out costs due to a rapidly decreasing number of medication distributed. Once this occurs, medical companies need to provide more and more medication into the market, and medical insurance providers need to raise their premiums due to the demands. All these things can be avoided if the root cause of the problem is alleviated. Reports show that most teens are getting their medication through friends, most of whom get it from their parents medicine cabinet. Looking at the design solution is the first step to help this issue when finding a way to intervene through design. This can range from a combination of ad campaigns and product, or intervention through legislation, policy and systems.

Conceptual Development
Different design outcomes can include, but not limited to, changes in medical policies, educating doctors and medical facilities, products of prevention and distribution. Design can have an immediate effect on prescription drug abuse, because it addresses the urgency of the matter, and zeros in on the root cause, as opposed to public service announcements that can only affect the people willing to listen, which isn't much.

Feedback
Some of the feedback included finding out who exactly is abusing prescription medication, and see if there is a growing trend. Also to look at systems that have been introduced yet failed, and pinpoint why these things have failed. Also see incidents that occur not only with the individual abusing the drug, but other sort of activities these teens and young adults are getting themselves into, either mental or behavioral changes, and or perhaps crimes associated with drug abuse. Urgency was also a key word, and my design process has developed a bit further in informing the prevalent nature of this issue.

Next Steps
Next steps would be applying my research methods and feedback to build my design criteria, make any necessary changes in my design research, and start building 3 dimensional study forms that I could apply to my design solution.


Feedback during class:

During class, the feedback I received was helpful in that it put emphasis on demographic and location of where these sorts of issues occur. I have to conduct more research and look at society at large, and see why prescription drug abuse occurs in certain areas. It would also be effective in looking at other activities associated with prescription drug abuse. Another question that should be addressed is looking into specific drugs that are found inside an average household, and figure out ways that they are being obtained. As long as prescriptions are issued by doctors and filled by pharmacies, abuse will remain a prevalent issue. My goal is not to completely eradicate prescription drug abuse, although that would be ideal, but rather to figure out a tangible solution and help as many teens and young adults as possible, and really make a difference in an individual’s life. My next step is to keep the interviews an ongoing process, and to obtain as much information as I can. I will start to build tools and sketch models to possibly see a tangible solution to a pressing and urgent issue.

By looking at accessibility charts, there lays many different opportunities to intervene.