Walmart's Answer To "A Better Pizza Box"

In July I wrote about designing a better pizza box, and it seems Walmart has their answer. In a short article and video on FastCompany.com yesterday, Walmart is "closing the loop" on their cardboard deli pizza boxes by using their old cardboard waste to create these new boxes. This solution does keep many hundreds of thousands of cardboard boxes from ending up in landfills, but could they have gone further? Perhaps they could have set up an in-store take back program and simply reused these cardboard boxes again without having to produce new boxes.

You Are Selling Services, Not Products

Interactions Magazine has a great article in which Donald Norman begins by stating, "A product is actually a service." He goes on to explain that since a service is much more than the product itself, systems thinking is needed to ensure the entire product experience is a cohesive and integrated one.

Your product team must think through and manage the whole experience a consumer will have while interacting with your product. Every member of the multidisciplinary team must push the other members to keep each message consistent and unified so the product delivers on its promise of a great experience for the user. Systems thinking is an indispensable tool every design team must use in order to create those memorable experiences consumers will keep coming back for.