Inclusive design: making packaging easier to open for all

Social equality demands a shift in attitude, away from treating older people and people with disabilities as special cases requiring special design solutions, and towards enabling them to have equal access to any product or service through a more inclusive approach to the design of buildings, public spaces and, more recently, products and services. This is not just important for social equality but also for business growth through new products and services and through creating wider potential markets. Consumer packaging is a field in which many people, including young able bodied people, often struggle in relation to openability. Until now, the main thrust of inclusive design in the consumer packaging field has been driven by art and design disciplines, focusing on the shape and ergonomics of the packaging or cognitive solutions in order to make them easier to open. This approach does not always work first time and a time consuming, materially expensive trial and error process often ensues. This paper outlines all the arguments for inclusive design, stressing the importance for both consumers and business. This paper also outlines an engineering design approach for inclusive design that uses real human factors as design limits, resulting in packaging that will be easily opened by all it’s end users without the expensive trial and error approach that has been used up to this point in time. The example of the Roll-On-Pilfer-Proof (ROPP) closure system is used in this paper.