01

The problem

Taking medicine on time is a memory task wrapped in anxiety. The people who most need a reminder, older adults, people managing several prescriptions, caregivers, people with low vision or limited dexterity, are the ones most often failed by reminder apps built for confident, fast, one-handed young users. And a medication product carries a second burden: it must never quietly become medical advice.

02

Hackathon context

This began as an entry in the CVS Health Global Hackathon, built under a short time box: one concept, defensible reasoning, and something clickable at the end. I framed the brief around inclusion rather than novelty, no separate “senior mode”, no AI layer, no gamification. The constraint that shaped everything was that the idea had to live inside the app CVS already ships, not beside it.

03

The original concept, and what I changed

The first version was a twenty-one-screen flow on a red CVS shell. It covered the whole journey, which is why it was worth rebuilding rather than restarting, the structure was right, the execution carried risk.

04

Research and accessibility framing

Rather than design for an average user and retrofit accessibility, I wrote the constraint list first and treated it as the specification.

05

Simplified architecture

Reminders belong where prescriptions already are. Nothing was added to the tab bar.

Primary
Pharmacy → Medication reminders → Choose medication → Confirm medication
        → Set schedule → Choose days → Reminder times → Notifications
        → Review reminder → Save → Medication due → Record dose → Today / history

Recovery
Medication due ─┬─ Remind me later (this occurrence only)
                ├─ Skip this dose (+ optional reason, side-effects hand-off)
                └─ Missed reminder → Record what happened / Contact pharmacy
Setup ──────────┬─ Ambiguous directions → manual entry or pharmacy
                ├─ Notifications denied → reminder preserved
                └─ Manual medication entry (nothing inferred)
Anywhere ───────┬─ Offline / loading
                ├─ Profile switch (authorized caregiver only)
                └─ Edit · Pause · Delete (confirmed, prescription untouched)

06

Today

The first question is always “what do I take now?”. Today answers it in one screen: due now, later today, and what has already been recorded, each item labeled in words, never by color alone.

07

Reminder setup

Setup starts from a prescription CVS already holds, so strength and directions arrive read-only and labeled. Each step asks one thing, and nothing is saved before the review screen. When the directions are ambiguous, “as directed”, “as needed”, the flow stops rather than guessing, and offers the pharmacy.

08

Notification design

The permission request comes with a reason and a privacy choice, in context, before the system prompt. The person decides whether the medication name appears on the lock screen. If permission is denied, the reminder is still created and the app says exactly what will and will not happen.

09

Recording a dose

The due screen carries three plain choices, record it, postpone this one occurrence, or skip it. Recording announces the confirmed time out loud for VoiceOver, stays undoable, and writes to the reminder history rather than to the prescription record.

10

Missed-reminder recovery

This is the screen most reminder apps get wrong. It never suggests doubling a dose, never scolds, and never guesses. It offers what is true: record what actually happened, or talk to a pharmacist.

11

Family and caregivers

Caregiving is the common case, not the edge case. Switching to another person’s reminders requires their authorization, shows a persistent banner naming whose reminders are on screen, and lists every consent granted, with no ability to alter their prescriptions.

12

History

History is a record, not a scoreboard. It shows taken, taken late, skipped and missed in supportive language, keeps corrections traceable, and stays separate from the prescription record so nothing here can be mistaken for a clinical document.

13

Accessibility annotations

WCAG 2.2 AA was the floor, not the goal. The type scale, target sizes and status language were fixed before any screen was drawn.

14

Component system

Twenty-two reusable components, each specified with default, pressed, focused, selected, disabled, loading, error, large-text, Dark Mode and VoiceOver behavior. Color is native iOS semantics plus CVS red reserved for the primary action; type is the system stack on a single scale; spacing is 4-pt with 16-pt margins and 12-pt grouped corners.

15

Prototype walkthrough

Every visible control works, on deterministic fictional data. Create a reminder from a prescription, record a dose, postpone or skip it, recover a missed reminder, edit or pause a schedule, switch to an authorized family profile, and review history.

16

Every screen

17

Outcomes and lessons

This concept was recognized at the CVS Health Global Hackathon. It is a concept, not a shipped feature, so there are no adoption or adherence numbers to report, and inventing them would undermine the thing the work is actually about.