First momentary unboxing experience with aesthetic interaction

Abstract

There is a popular trend of online videos called unboxing: people are documenting the process of unpacking product packaging with commenting what they feel and think. Catching up with the trend, designers and practitioners in companies have struggled to improve packaging design, especially concerning unboxing experiences. Unboxing is spotlighted in a sense that it plays a role in making the first impression upon product as well as intensive emotion is aroused at the moment. When it comes to packaging design, most of the previous studies have focused on examining the visual elements for eye-catching packaging in the purchase stage, but there is little research on testing packaging design regarding unboxing interaction. Under the notion, this study aims to address the possibility of unboxing interaction as a significant factor influencing user emotional experience and first impression for the product under the two research questions: 1) How unboxing with aesthetic interaction will affect to user emotional experience? 2) How unboxing with aesthetic interaction will influence the appraisal of product first impression? Research-through-design approach was adopted to prototype experiment stimuli under the control of packaging elements. The concept of aesthetic interaction and three factors were applied as design criteria for making three packaging types: freedom of interaction (Type A), interaction pattern (Type B) and richness of motor actions (Type C). The three types of packaging were developed, and 45 participants were asked to unbox them in random order and respond 14 emotions through PrEmo, a self-report emotion measuring tool. Then, they were requested to appraise the impression of product with 29 bipolar semantic differentials (SD) scales and tell overall impression of unboxing. This was followed by an interview in which the reasons why they thought like that were asked. Statistical analysis was utilized to compare the difference in emotional responses and SD between the prototypes. Descriptive and in vivo coding processes were used to analyze the unboxing experience in general. As a result, the emotions of ‘joy’ and ‘fascination’ were aroused by the unboxing activity itself, and the three packaging prototypes evoked different types of and intensity of emotions. Primarily, it was revealed that the types of interaction significantly influenced the negative emotion of 'dissatisfaction.' Also, the interaction type of unboxing packaging was shown to influence the participants' appraisal of the packaged particular product's semantics significantly. Product type and interaction metaphor were associated with each packaging prototype, and the verbs describing unboxing activity varied between the package types. These findings are expected to provide design practitioners with a design guideline for packaging design and furthermore, to contribute to intentionally design emotional experience and first impression via unboxing packaging. Limitations and recommendations to a further study are discussed at the end.