If you’re someone who has ever bought or owned an iPhone, chances are that the box that phone came in, still continues to be in the storeroom or a cupboard or a shelf in your room.
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While you won’t do the same with the packing of any other kind, with an iPhone’s box, the feeling is different, and for some, even inexplicable. And if you’re someone who is feeling bad about this hoarding feeling, you’re not alone. I do this too.
However, this week, while browsing through Twitter, I found a series of tweets that sort of explained why most of us behave this way with a cardboard box of a phone that does nothing after the phone and its accessories are out of it.
Via his thread of tweets by one Trung Phan explained what really has gone behind the scenes to make us feel and behave the way we do today.
1/ Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in January 2007.During the presentation, he noted that Apple had filed or been granted 200+ patents for the device.One of the patents: the iPhone case. pic.twitter.com/ka4Blwb5DA
— Trung Phan 🇨🇦 (@TrungTPhan) October 27, 2021Patents for iPhone packaging
Phan explains that when Jobs unveiled the first iPhone to the world in 2007, he had revealed that the company had filed/granted over 200 patents for the device, and one of the patents was for the box the phone came in.
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Hours that went into designing the packaging
In a conversation with Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson, (highlighted by9to5Mac) Apple’s former Chief Design Officer, Jony Ive, revealed how both Jobs and he spent countless hours on the way the devices were to be packaged.
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He said, “Steve and I spend a lot of time on the packaging. I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theatre, it can create a story.”
A little digging revealed a statement by Adam Lashinsky, executive editor of Fortune Magazine in his book ‘Inside Apple’ where he revealed that at Apple, there is in fact a secret packaging room only accessible to a few individuals.
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Creating an unboxing experience
Lashinsky explains, “To fully grasp how seriously Apple executives sweat the small stuff, consider this: For months, a packaging designer was holed up in this room performing the most mundane of tasks - opening boxes.”
The book highlights that it is this that makes it a rather satisfying and joyful experience to open a smartphone box for the first time (even if someone doesn’t own the phone). The room that creates this experience is often filled with hundreds of prototype boxes made by Apple’s designers.
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The placement of earphones, chargers, documentation and the phone itself is carefully placed, to create an experience even before the phone has turned on. Easy to peel tabs make the experience even more satisfying.
Lashinsky further explains how Apple manages to bring out the strong emotion, “One after another, the designer created and tested an endless series of arrows, colours, and tapes for a tiny tab designed to show the consumer where to pull back the invisible, full-bleed sticker adhered to the top of the clear iPod box. Getting it just right was this particular designer's obsession.”
He added, “What's more, it wasn't just about one box. The tabs were placed so that when Apple's factory packed multiple boxes for shipping to retail stores, there was a natural negative space between the boxes that protected and preserved the tab.”
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The multi-sensory experience
Trung Phan calls this a multi-sensory experience, where a buyer first sees the box, feels the friction when the box slides and hears the whoosh of the air rushing out of it.
7/ Small details at every step make bring about the "ritual" Ive spoke about:◻️Pulling the box's plastic off with a tab◻️The entire opening experience◻️Peeling back the screen protector◻️Inspecting cords/earbuds held in origami paperAll of this before turning the phone on. pic.twitter.com/yM1LG2dtw0
— Trung Phan 🇨🇦 (@TrungTPhan) October 27, 2021And this would make anyone wonder if they've spent so much effort in designing the packaging, the extent they would have gone for the product is unimaginable!
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