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Article
Design For Ability
May 1, 2005 By: Tom Andel Paperboard PackagingA new era of universal packaging
A couple years ago, Dr. Glen House, an M.D. from Colorado Springs, Colo., and Muffy Davis, a paralympian from Salt Lake City, climbed 13.5 miles to the summit of Pikes Peak. That would be quite an accomplishment for anyone. House and Davis conquered this mountain in wheelchairs.
This isn't a story about mountain climbing. It's about the kind of heroic packaging design efforts that went into delivering the wheelchairs to these amazing people. It's the kind of packaging that will take converters out of the commodities business and put them in the same league as their customers whose products make life easier for people like these mountain climbers.
 Anchor Bay Packaging, Independence Technology and Ethicon Endo-Surgery collaborated on the design of the transport packaging for the I-Glide wheelchair. Logistics costs added to the argument for a more labor- and space-efficient package design that would make it suitable for shipment by small parcel carriers rather than common carrier. |
The story behind the wheelchair packaging is about universal design. In the late 90s, a group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers collaborated, under the auspices of N.C. State University, to establish principles of universal design for manufacturers to follow (see sidebar, Elements of Universal Design.).
In a nutshell, universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.
 Elements of Universal Design |
Supply Chain Benefits
Universal design is finally catching on with the corrugated and folding carton converters serving product manufacturers in all industries. They're realizing that by following these principles they can make life easier not only for those among us with disabilities, but for everyone — even the people in the plant or distribution center responsible for packaging products. On top of that, it's a market differentiator.Anchor Bay Packaging, New Baltimore, Mich., made the corrugated shipping carton that housed the I-Glide wheelchair House and Davis used to climb Pikes Peak. The company also was part of the package design team, which included people from Independence Technology, the chair's manufacturer, and Ethicon Endo-Surgery — both Johnson & Johnson companies.
Corrugated wasn't the first choice when the packaging for this chair was first discussed. In fact, the original package design didn't even take end-user capabilities — or disabilities — into account.
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"That's ironic, given the fact that it's a wheelchair and the end user is handicapped," says Mark Leuenberger, manager of advanced packaging systems, Ethicon Endo-Surgery. "They had to open it from the top, reach down into it and remove the contents — which aren't real light — from the top of the box. That was a large driver of the redesign."
The people packing the chair at the plant also were factored into the new design's concept.
"While they're not handicapped, it was not ergonomically ideal for them to be reaching down through the top of the box with large heavy items to pack it out," Leuenberger adds.
Logistics costs added to the argument for a more labor- and space-efficient package design. The original package design was so large it could not be shipped via small parcel carriers like UPS and FedEx. It had to go common carrier. The dimensions of the redesigned box made it acceptable to the small parcel carriers.
"It was a matter of reconfiguring the arrangement of the parts inside the package," Leuenberger explains. "You start with a bottom tray onto which you load the product. The outer container is a half slotted sleeve that fits on top and wraps around. Locking tabs on the base of the tray secure it to the corrugated cover."
 In addition to containing product, the Burgopak dispenses its product, presenting it to the consumer. |
The fact that the new package is largely made of corrugated board meant it could be recycled. Although Anchor Bay Packaging contributed so mightily to the design, plastic, foam dunnage and molded locking tabs also play key roles in the package's compact size, protective properties and ease of use.
"Before, it cost $400 to ship this wheelchair," says Virgil Adkins, design engineer at Anchor Bay. "We were able to condense the size of the pack so it could be shipped UPS, which saves the manufacturer a million and a half dollars a year. We took into account the end user as well as the guys who were assembling the product throughout the manufacturing process. We also worked with test subjects."
 The Burgopak concept, soon to be introduced to pharmaceutical consumers in Europe, is designed to keep dosage instructions and the medicine delivery mechanism part of the same paperboard package. |
Future Customers
The demographics of the test subjects used as a benchmark for wheelchair packaging will characterize a good portion of the U.S. population in a few years. Corrugated and folding carton converters would do well to keep that in mind as they look for ways to differentiate their packaging."Any way you can make packaging easier for people, whether they're in the warehouse or in the home, it will be an advantage for the packaging company," says Laura Bix, assistant professor at Michigan State School of Packaging, and a specialist in universal design. "Look at the demographic trends. A large bubble of older, disabled people will hit the market as the baby boomers age. Twenty percent of the population will be over 65 by 2030. The Interagency Forum on Aging estimates that by 2050, five percent of the population will be over 85. Consider that disability prevalence increases with age. We have ocular declines, cognitive declines, perceptual declines, declines in dexterity. That says, if I'm a packaging manager, I should be preparing for this."
 Disability prevalence by age Percent with specified level of disability |
Think of the people in the work force as well.
"A large percent of retired baby boomers are returning to work to earn extra money," she adds. "You'll probably have older people working in warehouses and handling your packages. You have to be concerned about the users, inside or outside the plant, who will be reading or interpreting your labels. There's a difference in pupil dilation, in color contrast perception, so you need to be sensitive to that as you choose ink color combinations."
Paperboard Dexterity
Bix was impressed by the big accomplishments of everyone involved in the wheelchair example cited earlier, but ask her about the paperboard component of packaging and she'll tell you how something as tiny as a hearing aid battery represents an accomplishment just as grand."Duracell is the best example of universal design I can think of using paperboard," she says. Duracell and Product Ventures, a Fairfield, Conn.-based structural design consultancy, redesigned the package for hearing aid batteries so customers could more easily handle and install them.
 Duracell and Product Ventures redesigned a package for hearing aid batteries so customers could more easily handle and install them. Paperboard grippers add visibility and dexterity to the battery installation process. |
"Duracell realized their platform, as well as that of their competitors, was really not serving the consumer because these batteries were difficult for the user to pick up," Bix explains. "They would tend to put them in upside down or backward. They would also drop them and had difficulty picking them up."
A research team did one-on-one consumer interviews to discover the specific storage and handling challenges encountered. It was determined that the packaging was not empowering consumers to load the batteries into their hearing aids. The ideal package needed to be a delivery system, not just a distinctive package, Duracell and Product Ventures determined. Concepts were generated, modeled and tested with consumers via qualitative research and the solution was revealed and developed for manufacturing.
Although the adoption of a small paperboard gripper resulted in a complete change in packaging and added to the cost, it ended up differentiating Duracell from its competitors. Today, both the brand and the package are very popular with customers.
Good Medicine
Pills and capsules can be as hard to handle as hearing aid batteries. Difficulty and danger are elevated, however, when the packaging doesn't treat content information as seriously as the content itself. If dosage instructions are lost or hard to read, the medicine is useless at best or dangerous at worst.Charlie Bluett says packaging should be part of the prescription consumers buy, acting as both a convenient storage and dosage mechanism and an information medium at the same time. That's the concept behind the Burgopak system, featuring an opening mechanism that makes paperboard packaging a more accessible and flexible alternative to plastic packaging.
"We've designed a package that is senior friendly and has gone through a number of focus groups," says Bluett, world group managing director and co-founder of Burgopak USA LLC. "It's a simple pull or push mechanism. The brand and the instructions stay affixed to the product so you don't have to worry about stuffing them back into the box."
The Burgopak concept started as an alternative to plastic CD and DVD jewel cases, but Bluett says this package can contain anything, including high-end electronics and telecommunications devices.
"So much of packaging is seen as secondary, but it's really a primary element in getting a product into someone's shopping cart," he says. "This box is dispensing the product, presenting it to the consumer. Ease of opening is a monstrously important piece of packaging."
The Burgopak concept will soon be introduced to pharmaceutical consumers in Europe. It has already passed muster with focus groups in the U.K. Bluett says it was perceived by seniors as being a more user friendly design because the instructions and the blister stay attached to the pack. He anticipates approaching the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about introducing this concept to American pharmaceutical manufacturers in the second half of 2005. In the meantime, he's hoping to partner with U.S. paperboard converters so he can introduce his concept to mass markets.
"Brilliant design is one thing, but being able to give customers four million of these containers in four weeks is another," he says. "We want to be contacted by anyone out there producing paperboard packaging and talk to them about making the Burgopak work around their products. We're looking for high-end companies in terms of production and those that have the capabilities to work with our box."
The lesson of universal design for converters is, stop thinking about ways to encapsulate products. Think in terms of who will be opening your container and how you can make it easier for them to get the most value out of it. Added value is at the heart of universal design, and it's key to the converter's ability to meet the special needs of the aging consumer base.
