It is important when designing a product that you do not forget about designing the user experience (UX). This includes everything from manufacturing, consumer usage, disposal, and in this particular case study: packaging.
It is easy to dismiss packaging as a mere vessel to get the product into the users hands, and while that sentiment is true, it's also the first interaction that a customer has with a product. This is important to consider because we know that first impressions carry a lot of weight with them.
The fact that the interaction carries so much weight is what we, as designers, should be concerned about.
There is a phenomenon in user experiences called anchoring, in which the first impression one has with a product (or the first object in a series of objects) will often be considered as the most important. For example, in a line of cell phones a customer is comparing, they will typically consider the first phone they interacted with as superior and will judge the rest against it first. This does not mean that the customer won't overturn that idea down the line, but the fact that the interaction carries so much weight is what we, as designers, should be concerned about.
Now I want to state upfront that I am very happy with my new Samsung Galaxy S21+5G, and that this design flaw in their packaging did not detriment my opinion of my new phone. However, it is a perfect example of poor user experience design, and it didn't really stand out to me until I was throwing away the box from my old Samsung Galaxy S7 (Yes, I'm one of those box-keeping people. Yes, I hate it too.).
So the Samsung Galaxy S21 comes in a very nice, sleek looking box, and it gives off the appropriate vibe of high-end electronics. The problem is it is darn near impossible to open! The box itself is a telescope box (where a larger lid slides over a smaller box) but the lid and the box are perfectly tight and flush, which makes it extremely difficult to get a fingernail in and pry the two apart. What if someone didn't have fingernails??
This is a far cry from the good old Galaxy S7 box, which features an easy grip pull slot to remove the box from the sleeve. It takes 30 seconds and one swear word to open the S21 box, the S7 can be opened in 2 seconds max.
Comparison of the two opening methods of the two boxes:
