Ellen Weaver was delighted to receive a bouquet of 18 multi-colored roses for her birthday two weeks ago.
That delight quickly turned to frustration when it took her 10 minutes to open the package.
For senior citizens and people with disabilities, opening packages can be a daily struggle that gets in the way of being self-sufficient, said Weaver, who has lost some motor control in the right side of her body.
Weaver was among the 80 guests who attended the opening of Universal Package '06, an international conference on the trends and challenges in packaging design organized by the MSU School of Packaging at the James B. Henry Center for Executive Development. The conference began on Monday and ends today.
Weaver is the executive director of the Capital Area Center for Independent Living, a nonprofit organization that helps senior citizens live independent lives.
"Packaging designers are often able-bodied and think of themselves as the standard when designing packaging," said Laura Bix, an assistant professor at the packaging school who is a co-director for the conference. "The challenge of packaging today is to consider people with less than perfect vision and dexterity."
One of the common packaging problems for senior citizens is mustering enough strength and coordination in their hands and fingers to pop out pills from blister packs, open medicine bottles with child-proof caps and rip open food boxes. They often resort to biting open the packages, Weaver said.
Jim MacLaren, who uses a wheelchair, began the conference with a speech and demonstrated how he opens containers by using his teeth to open the spout of a drinking bottle and then takes a drink.
He lost his left leg after being hit by a New York City bus when he was 22. He competed in triathlons until he was hit again — this time by a van — and was paralyzed from the neck down.
He has regained some motor control in his arms and now leads the Choose Living Foundation, a charitable organization helping people with disabilities around the world.
"At the end of the day, when I look in my refrigerator to decide what to eat, sometimes my decision is based on what is easy to open," MacLaren said. "If things are easier to open, we can finish eating or taking our medicines faster, and we can get on with the more important task of living."
Because of advances in health care and medicine, people have better chances of living longer and surviving accidents, said Joe Koncelik, a professor emeritus of the Department of Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design at The Ohio State University.
Koncelik, who has been studying product design for furnishings, appliances and vehicles for 37 years, was one of 17 speakers for the conference.
"We have a growing population of elderly and people with disabilities," Koncelik said. "The influence of this population is growing, and it will become even stronger in the next 20 to 30 decades.
"The manufacturing and packaging industry must respond to their needs."
To determine how to create more user-friendly containers, industry experts videotape volunteers with different types of disabilities opening different kinds of packages.
From this, they are able to pinpoint the root causes of the difficulties, said Javier de la Fuente, a master's student at the school of packaging who is also a co-director for the conference.
Bix and de la Fuente have been conducting studies with Weaver and volunteers from the Capital Area Center for Independent Living for the past two years.
"With this conference, we are trying to increase awareness about problems people have with packaging," Bix said. "These problems may sound trivial, but for many people, being able to open their food and medicine by themselves may be the difference between living independently and depending on assistance."
