As the final project of my BSc Industrial Design (TU Delft), I created a concept for sustainable packaging for The Maker Store in Amsterdam.
Choosing a Design Direction
This was an open assignment: we could design anything for the Maker Store. A new product for the store, a product improvement, or a new strategy. Therefore, I started by analyzing the Maker Store as a company, its products and its place in the market. After interviewing the owners, reading the website and their vision documents thoroughly and mapping the products, I used the SWOT methods to define a direction for the project.
Because the Maker Store sells products of many small product designers (Makers) and because I wanted the design to be sustainable, I decided to design sustainable packaging for the Makers to sell their products in, as a service of the Maker Store.
Ideation
Before I started with ideation, I interviewed several ‘Makers’ on the Maker Market, a market that the Maker Store organizes. Then, I mapped down what the different stakeholders would expect and hope for in packaging. I formed some ‘Hoe-kun-je’ (How can you…) questions to become creative. I mapped the ideas in a morphological chart to combine the ideas from the different levels to each other.
Me (with small backpack) interviewing a Maker 
The target groups vote
Final Concept Direction
During the same time, the Maker Store was about to launch their own website to sell their products online. I started wondering why products actually needed packaging. The main two reasons for that are to communicate information about the brand and product and to keep the product safe and intact.
To communicate information about the brand and product sustainably, that could be done by using a small label or cardboard strip around the product. At that time, Makers brought their products in ‘bulk’ to the Maker Store and not individually packed, to safe costs. So the actual need for packaging had to do with online shopping and making sure the consumer got the product safe. Therefore I decided to design a reusable envelop as traveling package for the products from the Makers sold online.
Detailing and Prototyping
The concept was analysed using a user journey to list demands and wishes for the ReEnvelop. Next to that, I made prototypes to test and improve my concept.
The poster (at the top of the page ↑) was made for an exhibition. At the end of the project the concept, user story, benefits and costs of the concept were presented to the Maker Store, coaches and fellow students.
Design activities
- Stakeholder meetings (Maker Store)
- Interviews with Makers (Designers selling their products at the Maker Store)
- Business analysis
- Ideation using Brainstorming methods and prototyping
- Concept development and testing
- Presentations for the stakeholders, coaches and fellow students