Alaster Yoxall
Single Portion Packaging
2015-2018
Output: Journal Article
This enquiry investigates the demands that opening food packs place on consumers in terms of their physical and cognitive attributes. Whilst a seemingly simple task it can severely test an individual’s strength, finger manipulation and their ability to perceive and understand the information that the pack provides the user. These demands are usually studied in isolation.
This research looks at these factors concurrently using a range of methods including observation, motion capture, questionnaires along with dexterity and cognitive distraction tests combined with ergonomic analysis to understand the relationship between the pack form, hand manipulation and cognition. From this work researchers were able to determine which packs were more physically and cognitively demanding The results, illuminated in the paper, confirmed that the dexterous demands of a task can be linked to the cognitive understanding.
This research also developed the concept of the ‘Design Model’ of packaging use and the ‘User Model’ of packaging use. This comparative model has now been adopted by Britvic in developing test protocols for user panels in its New Packaging Development processes. This protocol was also presented at the 9th EuroSense conference on sensory and consumer research in December 2020 by Halak Parikh, Head of R&D, Insight and Sensory Science at Britvic PLC.
Research Output
This collection of images displays the outputs from this project. Find out more details in the full case study below.
Research Method
Understanding and measuring a participant’s grip strength and understanding its relationship to packaging accessibility is relatively straightforward. The same is not true for dexterity as even the definition of what is dexterity is complex and it is measured by a plethora of tools and descriptors.
Key Methodologies:
