Software Eats Packaging— The End of Apple Packaging & Rise of Packaging UX

One of the key areas of a product is the packaging. The box is a part of the product that companies spend hours strategizing on and engineering. Based on the needs of consumers and the business, packaging has evolved over the decades to fit new needs and is experiencing a dramatic shift with the advent of e-commerce.

The Past — Display Packaging

I remember in my teenage years walking the halls of CompUSA and looking at the cool new software for my PC. The packaging was ornate, brightly colored, and had a weight to it (especially since what was inside was just a mere cd-rom). The packaging used for computer software wasn’t to protect the software (music CDs came in with just a jewel box case at the time) but the point of packaging was to sell the product.

This goal of selling lead the packaging industry to innovate new materials, new designs, new ways to add weight, new ways to display the product inside with view boxes, ways to incorporate interactive demos within the packaging. With the growth of big box retail, product leakage became a greater concern and manufacturers were required to have packaging that made the product harder to remove. These changes led to packaging cost going from a minor part of the cost to where the packaging cost of the…