Many older people struggle with food packaging. This should not come as a surprise: there is little interest amongst designers in meeting older people’s needs, or producing designs which would enable a larger proportion of the population to open packaging more easily. This study set out to understand the extent to which designers could use more detailed information about the capabilities of older people as users, through a number of trials with older people. The trials involved observing and recording how older users opened packaging, and a series of interviews with designers about how they approached the design of packaging and the potential of using biomechanical information. “Openability” and designing for inclusion was not viewed as important by the designers, who largely considered that biomechanical information about the capabilities of users was too detailed for their needs. The designers felt that socio-economic information, which is what they currently use, was more important.