Define Customer Needs with Design Tools

Consumers are becoming more and more demanding about packaging. They expect it to be easy to open and, as such, this is becoming a major issue for the food industry [1]. From this perspective, the project "User-friendly packaging Ð Guidelines for the industry" [2] has the overall goal of improving package usability. The basis of the guidelines is to build a better understanding of the needs of consumers and how packaging, in a practical manner, should be made more user- friendly. Before the final guideline will be made available on the internet it will be tested in 5-10 industrial cases. In each case, the goal is to develop and improve packaging concepts in order to make general recommendations.Tulip Food Company began two case-studies in the spring of 2010. The case studies were started with a workshop in which all departments participated in knowledge sharing and practical activities. One activity in particular, video observation, was very effective in the improving understanding of the situation of disabled users. Visualisation and prototyping techniques had a significant impact in the process of understanding users' need, and making decisions about which factors it would be relevant to focus further on.