B5 · 2023 · Design research
RE
A packaging system for Indian e-commerce: boxes that open in one step, turn into something else afterwards, and an app that pays you to reuse or return them.
Read the full write-up on Medium- What I did
- Research, personas, ideation, physical prototypes, the app wireframes, user testing.
- Result
- Hand-built prototypes tested for how many trips a box survives, and a reward app to go with them. Presented at the India HCI 2024 student design competition.
Everybody wants it until the box arrives
E-commerce packaging in India is built for one trip. Packaging use went up more than 200% in a decade, most of it multilayered: a box, a bag, bubble wrap, tape. Opening it is annoying, things get damaged on the way out, and then all of it goes in the bin, because bubble wrap and thermocol are not what local recycling takes.
The interesting part was never the material. It was the distance between what people say and what they do, and design that argues with that distance loses.
People choose convenience. Make the sustainable option the easy one
The moment after the purchase is undesigned
Three things kept coming back, from desk research and from talking to people. Packaging designed to be upcycled improves the moment after the purchase and not just the delivery, and it makes a brand look like it means what it says. An incentive turns the sustainable choice into the choice that is good for me, and people respond to that in a way they do not respond to guilt. And one-step opening, protected but not layered, is what people remember, because it reads as care.
A slider and seal, no glue, no tape
Remove the tape and the layers rather than dressing them up
Instead of A nicer version of the standard box
The frustration is the tape and the layers, so the structure has to take them away. Making the pattern tessellated means it nests flat, so it wastes less board and stacks.
After It opens in one movement and closes again, which is what makes reuse possible at all.
The box becomes something else
Make the first reuse local, and the return the second option
Instead of Asking people to send packaging back out of goodwill
Return loops fail because the return is effort with no reward at the end of it. So the box turns into an organiser or a small DIY object first, and the app walks you through it.
After The payoff arrives before any effort is asked for.
Points, because guilt does not work
Pay people for reuse or return, and track it
Instead of Trusting environmental concern to change behaviour
This is the piece that addresses the intent-action gap directly. The app records reuse or return and the points are redeemable, and it carries the assembly tutorial, so it is useful before it is rewarding.
After Sustainability that has to be paid for loses. Sustainability that pays back wins.
Presented at India HCI 2024
We built the boxes by hand in corrugated board, designed the app that goes with them, and tested both together: people opening them, and how many trips a box survived. The physical prototype and the wireframes only make sense as one system, so they were tested as one.
Entered the student design competition at India HCI 2024
The open questions are all manufacturing ones
Which tells me the design got far enough for those to be the questions. A material as strong as corrugated board that is easier to close the loop on, smaller sliders so boxes stack tighter, tessellations for more product shapes, and simpler cutting patterns so it can be produced at volume. And test outside Mumbai, in other climates, before claiming durability.
The lesson underneath all of it: people choose convenience. If the sustainable option is also the easy one, they take it. If it is not, they do not, however much they care.