Why packaging usability is important

You don’t want the customer’s first experience with your product to be frustrating (or painful):

Yes, that is me opening my new electric toothbrush. I knew I had to get out the video camera when I saw it was that dreaded plastic packaging. Even worse, this whole bit was in a cardboard box, so the plastic is completely unnecessary. Compare this experience to opening a product from Apple.

From the article linked above:

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, injuries from plastic packaging resulted in 6,400 visits to emergency rooms in 2004.

I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.

The good news? After all that, I like my toothbrush.

8 thoughts on “Why packaging usability is important”

  1. yikes.. that’s basically how it happened for me too. the brush and all the parts ended up flying all over my bed.

  2. Yeah, what’s with the painful, impossible packaging? Who’s bad idea was it anyway?

  3. remember when we got the giant robot? it was in a similar plastic+cardboard package, and on top of that, all its limbs were secured to the box with tight wires, which were impossible to cut with scissors. that’s why it remained — useless — in its box for so long. and then it took about 40 minutes for reid and me to unpack it.

    did you guys ever get batteries for it?

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