UNIVERSAL DESIGN EDUCATION PROJECT

Humpty Dumpty Seminars presents:
"DOES UNIVERSAL DESIGN APPLY TO CONSUMER PACKAGING??"

The Design Center for Global Needs in the Design and Industry Department in conjunction with the Institute On Disabilities at San Francisco State University invites your participation in a special program for design and packaging professionals that will heighten your awareness of many of the problems associated with opening today's packaged consumer products. Whether able-handed or not, everyone can relate at least one "trying experience" he/she has had while attempting to open a particular consumer product.

HUMPTY DUMPTY IN REVERSE OR . . . How do I get this *%#&!% open?, a presentation developed by HUMPTY DUMPTY SEMINARS in conjunction with ACCESS/ ABILITIES, is designed to take a critical look at the user-friendliness of present day consumer packaging. Our perspective will be from that of the consumer and will be tempered by the concepts of Universal Design, as well as the rapidly growing size of the "not-so-able-handed" market within the American consumer base.

PART I: SEMINAR
This session will include a presentation by Ellen Lieber of ACCESS/ABILITIES, followed by a group discussion with several design and packaging professionals and program participants. Ms. Lieber's talk will focus on the size of the not-so-able-handed population in the United States -- 50+ million and growing!!, the type and strength of the hand movements and grips involved in package-opening, the increase and/or decline in their strength with age, and some examples of "impossible-to-open" packaging designs and suggestions for making them more "user friendly."

PART II: WORKSHOP
Then Workshop will become a much more "experiential experience." To personalize the difficulties in question, Ms. Lieber will lead the DAI 300 students in experiential exercises in which they will attempt to open an array of consumer packaging examples while wearing devices that limit hand and upper extremity motion. The workshop packaging design project will be to design a "user & environmentally-friendly" packaging from paperboard material for either sunglasses, a wristwatch, or shoes.

Part III: EVALUATION
This session will be a "show and tell" of all the design projects from Part II, and will include
evaluations and critiques by other session participants and faculty. A wrap-up discussion and evaluation of the entire Special Program in Packaging Design will conclude Part III.