Katherine Gough
Analyst, Seymour Powell Foresight

Video ethnography for the packaging industry: Using video ethnographic techniques to explore how the visual communication of food packaging aids the consumers’ ability to access the pack

This paper describes a two-year research project to investigate how video ethnographic research techniques can be integrated into the design process for the packaging industry.

Video ethnographic techniques were used to track how UK households interact with food packaging by shadowing consumers as they shopped in store, unpacked and prepared food at home.

The results of this observational research informed the development of a design tool for use by packaging companies and designers to evaluate how successfully the visual communication of the pack is working to aid ease of use throughout the pack’s lifecycle. The tool was then piloted with different packaging brand owners and used to identify design drivers and user needs at the design brief generation stage, benchmark existing packaging, foster user research techniques or evaluate packaging design concepts.

Exemplar packs were designed to illustrate the design tool and process.

A further aim of this project was to facilitate the role of the designer as consumer researcher, able to identify interactions and user strategies within the home and translate these into design proposals as part of a seamless creative process.

Case studies carried out with Marks & Spencer, Coors Brewers and Nestle explore the involvement of marketing, design, innovation and consumer insight managers in a creative design process based on research into consumer needs. Research inputs into the brief generation, design process and product evaluation.

The project began in October 2003 at the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre at the Royal College of Art, and will end October 2005.