We know the term User Experience (UX) is very attached to the Web, actually, the term exploded because of that, I dare to say. But UX is explorable everywhere, and should be considered on every commodity.
I posted an article about user experience on a mug a while ago, and I would like to bring you another way to explore user experience: When people unbox their products.
My experience unboxing a Mac
That’s it! You spent hundreds of dollars on your brand new, for instance, MacBook Pro. In Canada, a customized MacBook Pro 13″ costs around $2,000 CAD including taxes, your needs demands a compensation for that, you feel guilty to spend so much money on that.
Apple invested money and efforts in an unusual step of any product life-cycle: The unboxing step. Lets see what they have done:
First, the box itself it’s not that brown regular paperboard. The package design is colorful, has a handle to carry like a suitcase. And the best: Easy to open.
The first thing we see is the actual MacBook Pro, laying in a padded surface and a sexy black fillet over it saying “Designed by Apple in California” – looks like I’m unboxing an advanced prototype.
For my surprise, when I removed the MacBook (by pulling that black fillet) I saw in a glance a squared book saying “Hello”. That’s the manual.
First page: “Congratulations! You and your MacBook Pro were made for each other.” – at this point, they stated in your mind that THIS particular piece were made for you, just for you.
That reminds me movies when the girl when opening a gift box see a dog cub coming out happily and right after that, a note attached to its leash saying: “I’m your dog, love me!”.
Although silly from outside, for me, who actually spent money on it, I felt pleased with this little care. It was – funny – because when I bought my HP, it was just a regular box, containing a regular notebook. No new experience, it’s just a trivial task of me unboxing a notebook, no remarkable memories, and no post on this blog about it..
What’s important?
Whatever commodity you sell (cakes, candles, wine, handcrafts, etc) you should consider to add a good experience during the unboxing, in other words, you must create a story, a story that in the end [of unboxing] the customer falls in love for your product, and people around get jealous for not having the same experience and funny moments. These customers will share (like I shared here), and there is nothing better and cheap than free advertising of your product!
It’s like love on the first sight, Apple is here to prove that people buy good experiences, and this is just the top of the iceberg!
Future Reading
- Emotional Design – Definition
- Emotional Design with A.C.T. – Part 1 by Trevor van Gorp
Any thoughts? Feel free to give your inputs on the comments below 🙂 and thanks for reading!
Firstly great Read.
I totally agree with you, packaging and presentation of a product is one of the vital factors that influence consumers. A great packaging tends to give the consumer a sense of value for money on buying the product, it enables the consumer to justify his decision to go for the product.
Another add on is that a great user experience guarantees you the best and most trusted path of marketing – word of mouth !
Wow, sorry for this great lack of attention of mine to answer your reply.
Good point! For sure the word of mouth it’s really a pleasant and powerful consequence that makes me think that if our UX work back shot and ruin the experience, the same word of month may destroy our brand in a flash, certainly a power that we ought to handle with care.