Background
A package is always placed in the service of its accompanying product. It’s therefore crucial to carefully attune the specifications of both packaging and product. Within development trajectories products and packaging have to be designed conjointly. This means that developers from different backgrounds have to communicate and have to know what to contribute at what desired moments in the development process. This asks for insights into the development processes of a wide variety of products (from commodity food to specific industrial chemicals) and asks for the ability to communicate with developers of other fields like food technologists, product designers, process technologists, engineers, pharmaceutics, etc.
Excerpt of the first packaging design model showing the basic design cycles for packaging.Goals
Optimising the design process of packaging/ product combinations by means of new models and communication between various stakeholders. Software can foster this process and aids in well-founded and conscious decision making.
Perspectives
With a sound functional specification it is possible to avoid mistakes and to communicate with specialists involved in the development process without losing rationale. But the process is scattered throughout the chain and throughout time, this makes it difficult to apply such principles in practise. For instance, a packaging fulfils its functions in a much shorter time frame than the product does; this asks for modelling and research. Bottlenecks in communication are: differences in the field of education; varying educational levels of product designers and packaging designers; language and terminology.