Design > Redesign Exercise: Contact Lenses

Contact lenses are designed to correct poor eyesight yet the many measurements used to describe a given lens appear in tiny, difficult-to-read text on their labels.

This sample redesign attempts to address the problem in a number of ways:

• Increased font size for better legibility.
• Reordering and emphasizing of values facilitates easier comparison of a lens' measurements to the optometrist's traditional prescription format, usually written as: +0.50 -1.75 x100
• The encapsulation of the minus sign in a black circle prevents its confusion with a normally-displayed black plus sign on a white background.
• The lens' base curve, diameter, or expiration date - information less likely to be used often by the end wearer but still useful to have on hand - appears rotated from and smaller than the other, more relevant numbers, forcing cognitive grouping.
• Color coding the background of the label allows for at-a-glance identification of a lens. After making the association between the eye and the matching measurements, the wearer needs not look at the numbers at all. In the ideal case closely-numbered powers (ex: +1.25 and +1.50) would use dissimilar colors.