针对国际药品标签研究从单一视觉要素优化转向内容、呈现方式与信息架构证据化、标准化的趋势,探讨药房即时打印用药标签的适老化设计策略。采用混合研究方法,分析广州地区36份门诊用药标签并访谈老年用户与药师;以60名社区老年人（60~81岁,具备自主就医和用药管理能力,未纳入患有严重视力或明确认知障碍者）开展3种字体×3种字号的可读性测试;选取国际常用的美国药典象形图开展理解性测试与优化;对优化后的标签及三种用药指导单进行形成性评估。字体实验表明,黑体在阅读时间、正确率和视觉舒适度上均优于其他字体,其中16号黑体表现最佳,说明可读性不仅依赖字号放大,还取决于字形轮廓、笔画清晰度和关键词辨认效率。象形图测试显示,国际常用的用药象形图在中国老年用户中,并不天然具备跨文化通用性,17个图形仅4个被充分理解,误解主要源于生活符号差异、动作特征模糊与时间关系呈现不清;优化后的服药时序相关的图形语义匹配性明显提升。多药指导单评估表明,时序导向的架构获得70%的用户选择,说明老年用户更倾向于将药名、剂量、时间和注意事项重组为便于执行的服药序列。老年人友好型用药标签设计应立足于文字显示、图形语义与信息可执行三个层面,以形成“内容-格式-结构”的证据化体系。研究结论主要适用于具备基本自主就医和用药管理能力的社区老年群体。
Abstract
In response to the international research trend in medication labels, which has shifted from the optimization of isolated visual elements toward evidence-based and standardized approaches to content, presentation, and information architecture, the work aims to explore age-friendly design strategies for pharmacy-generated medication labels. A mixed-method research approach is adopted to analyze 36 outpatient medication labels in Guangzhou, alongside interviews with elderly users and pharmacists. Readability tests involving three font types and three font sizes are conducted on 60 community-dwelling older adults (aged 60 to 81 years, who are capable of independent medical consultation and medication self-management, excluding individuals with severe visual impairment or diagnosed cognitive disorders). Internationally used United States Pharmacopeia pictograms are selected for comprehension test and subsequent optimization. Formative evaluations are then conducted on the optimized medication label and three types of medication instruction sheets. The font experiment indicates that Heiti performs better than the other fonts in reading time, accuracy, and visual comfort, with 16-point Heiti showing the best overall performance. This indicates that readability depends not only on enlarged font size, but also on character contour, stroke clarity, and the efficiency of key word recognition. The pictogram test shows that internationally used pharmaceutical pictograms are not inherently cross-culturally universal among elder Chinese users. Of the 17 pictograms tested, only four are adequately understood. Misinterpretations mainly stem from differences in daily life symbols, ambiguous action features, and unclear representation of temporal relationships. The semantic matching of the optimized pictograms related to medication timing improves markedly. The evaluation of medication instruction sheets for multiple medications shows that the time-sequence-oriented architecture is selected by 70% of users, suggesting that elder users prefer medication information to be reorganized into an executable sequence integrating drug name, dosage, timing, and precautions. Age-friendly medication label design should be developed across three levels: textual display, pictorial semantics, and executable information structure, thereby forming an evidence-based system integrating "content, format, and structure". The findings of this work are primarily applicable to community-dwelling older adults with basic capacity for independent medical consultation and medication management.
关键词
老年人 /
用药标签 /
字体可读性 /
象形图理解性 /
设计研究
Key words
older adults /
medication labels /
font readability /
pictogram comprehension /
design research
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基金
广东省哲学社会科学一般规划项目（GD26CYS05，GD24CYS23）；广州市哲学社会科学发展“十四五”规划常规课题（2025GZYB32，2024GZGJ53）
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