work

Bormioli Pharma

Fast Factory, a user-centric approach to develop and design groundbreaking products

Service & Product Design
Design
2019

Challenge

Bormioli Pharma used to develop new products, satisfying the demands of and taking inputs from pharmaceutical companies, for which it develops primary packaging. The company was determined to set out on a new journey towards product innovation, which would make it a key player, capable of bringing groundbreaking solutions to the market quickly, continuously and independently by initially focusing on understanding users’ needs.
Solution

This led the company to adopt a strategic approach by pinpointing priorities with regard to new products, and to define a number of new product concepts and prototypes.

As part of a corporate program to promote an agile approach to innovation, we developed – in partnership with Bormioli Pharma – a three-phase process: from field research aimed at understanding the needs and behavior of users (patients, pharmacists, hospital staff, etc.) to co-designing possible solutions as well as rapid prototyping of new products.

The first phase involved conducting field research by interviewing key stakeholders, along with research on emerging trends and phenomena in the sector.

The outcomes of these researches served as a basis for the next phase, i.e. the co-design phase, where we identified new opportunities for Bormioli Pharma, based on users’ needs, combined with sector trends. The third phase, which we called “Fast Factory”, involved an iterative process based on the rapid prototyping principles, which allowed us to envision and develop groundbreaking products, as well as their prototypes, over a 4 to 6 month period.

Covering activities such as research, design, mock-up and prototyping, Fast Factory put together a multidisciplinary team of 10 people from Bormioli Pharma, also from the R&D and Marketing departments, with whom we co-designed and prototyped the new products.

After its first success, the company decided to turn this journey into a regular annual process that can help them identify some of the R&D department’s new products and projects.

The outcomes are always exciting, with many concepts, several of which have been prototyped, patented and subsequently presented at events and trade fairs, including Cphl Worldwide in Frankfurt, Germany.