Extensive testing revealed the most common difficulties people
experience with the traditional eyedropper or droptainer:

  • Aligning the tip of the eye drop bottle to its target

  • Touching the bottle tip to the eye or other surface

  • Needing two hands (one to drop the other to pull away the eyelid)  

  • Excess lubricant musses makeup or gives the appearance of crying

  • Waste. Drops are expensive, especially the highly effective formulas

  • Losing the bottle cap; guarding the tip from contamination

  • Waste. Drops are expensive, especially the highly effective formulas.

Early Pen Sketches & Printed Protptype.

Project Goal

Rethink the imprecise, unpredictable, and cumbersome method of applying topical eye treatments via an eye drop container (droptainer).

• Administer medicinal formulations of varying consistency and absorption;

• Dispensable by a single person or second (parent applying to child).

• Consumer-friendly size and price.

Solution

A portable device that reliably delivers instant relief with little user effort: simply hold it up to the eye (and the device does the rest).

• Precisely deposits solutions of high viscosity, such as gels, suspensions, ointments.

• Miniature application of proprietary filament extension atomization technology delivers sticky, viscous lubricants as a gentle plume (mist) of microscopic droplets.

• Computer vision and AI technology enable precise dosing —including dose volume, coverage, velocity, and positioning— and allow for the dispensation of pharmaceuticals with extremely high efficacy and minimal waste.

• Stabilizing technology compensates for changes in device stability (movement, gesture, positioning) when in use.

• Haptics and LEDs cue orientation, distance (from the eye), target capture, and predicted effectiveness/ outcome of dose.

• Dual cartridge system provides for flexibility use of diverse formulations: pharmaceutical, preservative-free, and device-cleansing.

• Anti-bacterial copper nozzle and cap; germ-resistant TPU enclosure; self-cleaning via onboard cleaning cartridge.

Assorted Printed Prototypes for Usability Testing.