Markus Joutsela
Towards Experiential Packaging
Understanding and Designing for Packaging User Experience (PUX)
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This doctoral dissertation explores Packaging User Experience (PUX)
through the lens of human-packaging interaction across different stages
of the consumer journey. Traditionally, packaging design has been driven
by production and logistics, often overlooking the experiential
dimension. This thesis introduces the PUX framework, which integrates
user experience (UX) principles, multisensory design, visual
communication, and experience-driven approaches into packaging design
practice. The four peer-reviewed articles address methods for collecting
consumer experience data, the role of recalled packaging experiences,
integrating experiential goals into design, and measuring changes in
willingness to pay as a result of packaging interaction. The research
establishes packaging as a valid domain of experience design and
provides practical tools to support user-centered, evidence-based
decision-making across the packaging value chain.
Markus
Joutsela is a Senior University Lecturer and Head of Major in Visual
Communication Design at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and
Architecture, Department of Art and Media. His work focuses on user
experience, multisensory design, and visual communication, particularly
in the context of packaging design. Joutsela's research explores how
experience-driven design methods can enhance both the strategic and
sensory functions of packaging across the consumer journey.
He is the
founder and long-time coordinator of Pack-Age (2011–2023), an
interdisciplinary packaging design program that brings together students
from design, engineering, business, and food science to create
sustainable solutions in collaboration with over 40 corporate and
industrial partners. Through his teaching, research, and applied
projects, Joutsela has contributed to advancing user-centered and
experiential approaches in packaging design education and practice.
He
has been involved in several industrially networked research projects
funded by Business Finland, including FOLD2 (2024–2025), FOLD
(2022–2023), CoCoPak (2020–2021), BioFlavor (2020–2022), Valuepack
(2014–2016), and LOHASPACK (2011–2014).