Wired magazine is reporting that scientists from Sunchon National University and Rice University have developed a printable RFID tag. The cost of the RFID tags were over $1/unit a decade ago. Back then, it was largely anticipated that in order for RFID to be fully deployed, the per unit cost needed to be at better […]

Gizmodo is reporting that Amazon has been shipping Western Digital hard drives in packages that are inadequate for proper protection under the frustration-free package program. As big as Amazon is, and as admirable as the frustration-free initiative is, Amazon is no expert in basic package usability, or in transport testing. We do believe that they […]

Grouping consumer insights into actionable sandboxes Once the ethnographic research concludes, the team brings back a host of insights. Then, in a cross-functional set-up, the team members can sit around the table, and decide which of the hundreds of consumer insights complement each other, and which are not pertinent. For example, years ago when we […]

Discovering consumer packaging needs and problems through ethnographic research A common misconception about innovation is that if a company innovates a more usable product, or a better looking product, or improves on some attribute of a product, then it is an innovative product, and therefore it should succeed. However, it often does not. The reason […]

Segmentation for Considered Purchases If you are buying a car, or an appliance, segmentation plays a very important part. For example, it would not be very surprising that BMW buyers are mostly men in their 40s. It would also be not so surprising to see that their income may be higher than average. As a […]

Vitality GlowCap, which has been around as a concept since 2007, recently is grabbing increasing attention. Now that Engadget is reporting a hands-on test, we felt that the time was right for an opinion piece on whether this is innovation or bust in packaging. Remote Accessed Tags in Packaging Among other technologies, RFID may be […]

1.5 Lt. Juice Packages (Europe) In the second article of the Package Death-Match series we will be comparing 1.5 liter fruit juice packages from the European market. The three packages we chose, even visually imply diverse handling characteristics that we want to compare. Naturally, beyond handling, we also compared opening, pouring and closing. Appearance Both carton […]

The Consumption Circle A consumer’s interaction with a packaged product, especially in the fast moving food categories is more prolonged than many in the industry would take for granted. As a result, companies design their packaged products for a single consumer touch-point, like POP stand-out, or visual appeal, or branding. In the consumer centric innovation […]

Blister packs are ubiquitous these days, packing products from mints to headsets.  Initial applications for items such as pills and mints generated little usability complaints and issues from consumers. However, the transition over the last decade(s) to pack electronics and similar higher value products in clamshell packages to control inventory shrinkage in the retail sector […]

Today, we have migrated from Typo web engine to WordPress due to its better ability to integrate with plug architecture and availability of a wide variety of plug-ins, including ones we would like to use for consumer feedback on package usability.  There are some aesthetic differences between the two set-ups which we will address in […]