SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING DESIGN
Product Design, Design Research, Subject to NDA
PROBLEM STATEMENT
In this project, our team cooperated with a big integrated company to improve the packaging design for a sustainable cleaning product line. We aimed to figure out the tension behind people’s shopping habits when they are looking for a new product in order to define how we might add this product line to their choices. Our goal was developing a delightful consumer experience with the packaging interaction experience.
DEFINE THE PROBLEM
We conducted 3 rounds of user interviews to gain a better understanding of the problem. From the first round of interviews, we came up with the following tensions and redefined our next step goal accordingly.
TENSION
- Consumers think try out new products may cause more waste if it ends up disappointingÂ
- The most secure packaging designs are hard to open/closeÂ
- Consumers have some using habits that are trained by the current trending products, but our new product cannot fit in that routine
HOW MIGHT WE...
- Adjust the volume of our product so people are willing to give it a tryÂ
- Keep the balance between security and ease of useÂ
- Adapt to consumers' using habit with our product
INTERIM RESEARCH OUTCOME​
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PERSONA
Through three rounds of user interviews with the same group of people, we were able to know each of them well and created a persona that would represent the shared characteristics of them. The persona ensured us to always keep in mind our target audiences, so our design was purely human centered. I contributed to the identification and drawing of our persona.
ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATE
In order to present and test our ideas better, we made low fidelity prototypes along the way. They consisted of the features we envisioned and were mostly made of paper to maintain unity. For the second and the third rounds of user interviews, we let the users play with our prototypes and recorded their reaction to each so we could make improvements accordingly. I was in charge of making most of the paper models. After several rounds of iterations, the final high fidelity prototype with both 3D modeling files and a physical model was delivered to our client and received highly positive feedback.
FINAL OUTCOME
Our final deliverable solved the tensions we found from user research in a novel way. We made use of the seemingly unrelated insights to allow the product to fit consumers’ current habits. Besides, we enhanced the packaging’s performance on the shelf by including all and only the crucial information that consumers are eager to know, thus making the new product more competitive in the market.
