As you like it: Understanding the relationship between packing design and accessibility

Abstract

Accessible packaging is continually receiving greater attention as an ageing population becomes a primary driver behind inclusive design. As we age, our strength dexterity and some cognitive functions decline. For this reason, the ease of interaction with simple tasks in daily living becomes an ever increasing concern. ISO 17480 “Packaging Guidelines” consider capability issues relating to packaging and ageing to broadly come under three areas, namely, strength, dexterity, and cognition. Significant previous work has been undertaken looking at the issue of strength on packaging accessibility, with fewer studies looking at the relationship between the physical demands of dexterity and the understanding of how to open the pack. In this previous work, there has been little attempt to quantify the effect of the affordances, perceptual information and symbology, and the physical demands of the pack and how this relates to accessibility. Hence, this exploratory study seeks to use motion capture and a dexterity test, along with a cognitive demand test to study this relationship and any changes with age. This research indicates that the dexterous demands of a task are linked to the cognitive demands; and thus in reaching a level of comprehension of the pack and how to access the product a subject may interact with a pack effectively.

Integrating Barrier-free Design in Packaging: A Literature Review of Global Practices and Applications in China

“…Dr Alaster Yoxall and team reported barrier-free package opening design findings on five academic papers. The findings emphasised package opening requirements match with elderly individuals' hand functions based on the 'inclusive design' concept, which developed packaging opening sits for the older populations by integrating biomechanical and engineering features to suit the opening requirements for elderly hand capabilities (Alaster et al, 2019;Langley et al, 2004Langley et al, , 2005aLangley et al, 2005b;Canty et al, 2005).…”

Evaluation of innovative design of clothing image elements using image processing

“…Clothing, food, housing, and transport are important parts of people's life. With the improvement of living standards, people's demand for clothing has gradually changed from covering and keeping warm to making themselves more beautiful [1]. In short, the improvement of the quality of life makes people pursue the decorative role of clothing to meet spiritual enjoyment.…”

Contributions to hand kinematics characterisation during product manipulation in activities of daily living

“…Other parameters focused in subjects' cognitive behaviour during grasping and manipulation have been proposed for product design purposes, such as gaze [73] (which can be assessed with special eye-tracking eyeglasses, equipped with eye cameras to record the eye movement and a camera recording the scene in front of the subject) or cognitive demand [76] (which can be assessed through a cognitive distraction test, in order to evaluate the cognitive load during the interaction with an object). Furthermore, as many of the parameters previously presented in this section, some works analyse and correlate several of them, such as muscle activation and gaze [73] or cognitive demand and hand posture [76].…”