Packaging research usually happens as a design review around a table, which tests the one moment packaging is least likely to fail. The failures are in the opening and the aftermath.
What to put in the public brief
- That a physical item will be shipped
- The countries you can ship to
- That photographs at several stages are required
- Whether they keep the contents
- Roughly how long between reserving and completing
Keep the brand and the product identity private, particularly pre-launch.
What to put in the private instructions
Ask for a photograph before anything is opened
Front on, in ordinary room light, on a plain surface. It is the shelf test and it must happen before curiosity does.
Ask them to open it normally, then say what they used
Fingers, scissors, teeth, a knife. What people reach for tells you more than any rating of how easy it was.
Ask for the aftermath photograph
Everything the packaging became once the product was out. Volume, materials, whether it separates for recycling.
Ask what they would do with it now
And believe the answer more than the sustainability opinion two questions earlier.
Proof worth requiring
Ask for
Three photographs — unopened, mid-opening, aftermath — plus what they used to open it and what they will do with the packaging.
Do not ask for
A score for the design. You are testing an object in use, and a number collapses the three separate judgements into one that answers none of them.
When this task type is the wrong tool
If you only need to know whether a design reads well at shelf distance, photographs and a comparison against competitors are cheaper and enough.
If you want the excitement of arrival on camera rather than a critique of the packaging, that is an unboxing, and it is a content brief rather than a research one.