Researcher Blog by Dr Alaster Yoxall: #2 – Why is packaging so frustrating?
About the author
Dr Alaster Yoxall is Principal Research Fellow in Human Centered Engineering and is based in Design Futures within the Art & Design Research Centre.
In this post, Alaster explores what makes food packaging so frustrating and shares some good news about crackers .
In my last blog I talked about how we are skipping gently down the path towards a sunlit upland, where in one bright future all the packaging would be ‘frustration free’. In particular, this search for the Holy Grail (if I can mix my narratives) has centred around hospital packaging. That is to say the single portion stuff that you may have come across in hotels, transport cafes, care homes, hospitals and indeed if you’re off Santa’s list, prisons. What I didn’t say in my last post, is what sorts of food packaging are most difficult to get into, and why?
Let’s deal with the why first. Getting into packaging requires us to understand how to get into the pack, and subsequently it requires us to have the strength and the dexterity to peel, tear, twist and pull the pack to gain access.
There are two things competing against our athletic abilities in the ‘Opening Packaging Challenge’:
- the requirement to keep things sealed for transportation (so the product is safe and in one piece when it gets to you), and
- to package things as quick as possible using the least amount of material on the production line (this keeps the cost down and reduces the environmental impact).
Much of the packaging that is problematic for people has been described in our research as ‘fiddly’: you can’t quite grasp it, or it doesn’t tear, or you can’t see where to tear it. This has been borne out by the packs we’ve tested so far that have failed the ISO test I mentioned in the previous blog.
So in terms of what sorts of food packaging are difficult to open, it’s packets of biscuits, crackers, cheese, sachets of sauce, jam and preserves, pretty much everything when it’s in packs that you can’t grasp, don’t tear or can’t see where to tear. For example, the common single portion pack of crackers failed the ISO test: nobody noticed the arrow showing where to tear the pack and all the participants chose a method that made opening the pack harder than it should have been. Working with the Design Futures team we’ve just redesigned the pack to help people do it an easier way. It’s due to be tested later this summer so watch this space.
Alaster Yoxall, Packaging testing, 2017
If we can crack it for the crackers for want of a better phrase, then we can sort it for many of these ‘fiddly’ packs, and we’ll be a few steps nearer to our ‘Holy Grail’. Sir Lancelot and the ‘Frustration Free Pack’ not quite the stuff of legends, but we’re on our way to making truly easy accessible single portion packaging, something real and not a myth.
Please note: Views expressed are those of the Author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of SHU, C3RI or the C3RI Impact Blog.
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