PERSONA FERTILITY: Unipath Ltd, Bedfordshire UK
Designed at Pearson Design - Kingston Upon Thames, UK
As seen on BBC Television when launched. On permanent display at the Design Museum, London UK
My involvement started from initial pitch to full industrial design involvement over 5 years. The work I did went from initial concept/ engineering/ brand evaluation with design work, through to POP prototypes, clinical trials units, and liaison with Philips Electronics in Europe who were the chosen manufacturers. When we won the bid for the program of work, it was just Mike and myself in small studio in Fulham. Over the next few years from this project alone, the company grew from the two of us to a 10 employees due to workloads required.
Persona has turned out to be one of the most influential products of the last decade showing how diagnostics can be used to change peoples lives.
Persona is the ultimate breakthrough product. It used new technology to address a new market and needed new manufacturing methods. It allowed Pearson Innovation to hone the ways of using design as an R&D tool in order to unravel a mess of conflicting requirements.
The true testament to this remarkable product is that it could have failed 1000 times but the process we evolved with Unipath allowed us to predict and overcome hurdles and ultimately get the product on the market successfully.
Go see it in your local chemist, it still looks fresh yet has not changed at all since launch 10 years ago.
Problem:
Persona is one of the largest projects Pearson Matthews has worked on, taking seven years from concept to launch. After Clearblue pregnancy tests were successfully launched Unipath came to us with just four words: urine, women, hormones and fertility. This turned into one of the most complex projects imaginable.
Clearly in a breakthrough project, Unipath needed answers where, when and how the device could be used. We worked through issues like user scenarios for this new form of contraception, displaying feedback to the user, design of a reliable low cost meter and investigating manufacturing methods that produced tests for a fraction of the price of Clearblue. Pearson Matthews were responsible for all design, development and manufacturing issues, with only some limited electronics activities being handled externally.
Benefit
Hundreds of issues could have tripped up this development programme yet it reached the market. Not only is Unipath now a world leader in fertility and contraception but Persona has been on sale consistently for over ten years with no significant change.
CONCEPT EVALUATION
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT TO 1st CLINICAL TRIALS UNIT
CLINICAL TRIALS UNIT
FINAL LAUNCH DEVICE
