Society is ageing and as the population ages, strength, finger manipulation (dexterity) and our ability to see and understand the world around us (visual acuity and cognition) all naturally decline. With this decline, accessibility of packaging becomes a more significant issue, with many older adults reporting problems accessing food, household goods and medicines. Significant previous research has been undertaken looking the demands that packs place on consumers in terms of their physical attributes, such as strength and finger manipulation and their ability to perceive and understand the information that the pack provides the user in aiding accessibility. In the guidelines for designing accessible packaging produced by the International Standards Organisation (ISO 17480 and ISO 22015), designers are prompted to understand these three key attributes in isolation. However, it is likely that the ability to access a pack is based on a range of factors and that these interact with each other. This study looks at these factors in combination using a range of methods including observation, motion capture, questionnaires along with dexterity and cognitive distraction tests combined with ergonomic analysis to understand the relationship between the pack form, hand manipulation and cognition.
Six common packs were selected for testing including crisps, chocolate, Weetabix, pens , biscuits and noodles, to provide a range of physical and cognitive demands. The participants were asked to open the packs whilst wearing eye -tracking glasses and read random numbers displayed on a screen. This enabled the researchers to see what the participants were looking at and measure the cognitive demand of each pack. The researchers also measured the dextrous demand when opening the packs usingnfra-red cameras tracking the finger movements. From this work researchers were able to determine which packs were more physically and cognitively demanding and what attributes of the pack made it more difficult to open.
The results confirmed that the dexterous demands of a task can be linked to the cognitive demands. Further, the paper developed the concept of the ‘Design Model’ of packaging use and the ‘User Model’ where the design model is using the pack how the designers intended and the user model how it is actually used. Packs were rated most easily openable where the design model most closely matched the user model. This concept of understanding the design model and user model was instrumental in Britvic developing user test panel protocols for its New Packaging Development (NPD) process.
