Step 1: Identify the Facts

• You’re a designer 
• Hired to create a low-cost syringe for a Low/Middle Income Country
• Auto-disable safety feature significantly adds to the cost 
• Do you add the safety feature and make it unaffordable for your target market or do you not add the safety feature and potentially risk the spread of disease?

Step 2/3: Define Stakeholders and motivations

• Investors→ Professional: Return on Investment
• Company→ Professional: Maintaining operations at a low cost
• You (the designer) → Professional: Creating what is asked at low cost
• Hospitals/Clinics→ treat patients while maintaining low administrative costs
• Doctors/Nurses→ Professional: help patients vs. their own Personal beliefs
• Patients→ get treated and keep healthcare costs low

Step 4: Formulate (at least three) alternative solutions

• Add the Safety feature→
  • pros: speeds up the design process, makes it safe/keeps it from being reused, make investors/company happy so they do not have to put more time/money into the design process
  • Cons: unaffordable for the population you are working with, more expensive to make the product/investors need to put more money into the production of the product 
• Don’t add the safety feature/include educational aspect on why the reuse of syringes is harmful
  • pros: keeps costs for both hospitals and investors low, informs doctors and nurses about the dangers of reusing syringes 
  • cons: still could be reused in low resource settings even with training, more time into implementation in order to teach doctors/nurses, and potentially more money for training
• Find alternative materials or cheaper safety features
  • pros: costs low for hospitals, includes the safety feature to guarantee it won’t be used again, 
  • cons: more money required from investors to start the design process again, delay in production

Step 5: Seek additional assistance, as appropriate

Doing a quick google scholar search on the use of syringes in low/middle-income countries shed light on how common the spread of blood-borne viruses is due to the reuse of syringes. It is also common for doctors and nurses to run low on support and supplies so they end up reusing syringes despite the potential health outcomes. Immediately, as the designer, this grabs my attention because it shows how important this safety feature is to the product design. I would also probably consult potential collaborators that have worked more closely with this area of design. 

Step 6: Select the best course of action

Personally, I believe the best course of action is to take a step back to redesign a syringe that is low cost and has the auto-disable safety feature. Especially in countries where resources for hospitals and clinics are scarce and have made it common practice to reuse syringes.  

Step 7: (If applicable) What are the implications of your solution on the venture.

A longer design timeline→ changes with the safety feature will cause a delay in production and increase costs for the design phase but in the long run will benefit the communities by helping reduce the resuse of syringes while making sure patients receive their necessary vaccines.