5.10.3 Prioritization - Product Box
At a Glance
Other names Product Box
In Brief
In Product Box, participants design the retail packaging for their ideal version of your product. Using a blank cardboard box and a tableful of craft supplies — colored markers, crayons, glitter glue, plain and colored paper, stickers — they build a box they would want to buy off a shelf, complete with product name, key features, slogans, and imagery, then pitch it back to the room. Rather than reacting to your ideas, they articulate what they want in their own words and visual language.
Common Use Case
You have a product concept or category, and you’ve talked to customers enough to know there is a real problem worth solving. What you do not yet know is which capabilities they would actually put on the front of the box if they were buying it — versus which ones your team is over-emphasizing internally. You have access to four to eight target customers for a couple of hours and a budget for craft supplies. The output is a set of customer-designed boxes plus the language, imagery, and feature priorities that emerge across them.
Helps Answer
- What features do customers find most compelling?
- How do customers describe the product’s value in their own words?
- What aspirational outcomes do customers associate with the product?
- What messaging and positioning resonate most?
- What would customers put on the “front of the box” versus the fine print?
Description
Product Box is a structured exercise where participants design the retail packaging for their ideal version of your product, then pitch it back to the room. It is the generative, open-ended end of the Prioritization family: rather than ranking features you already have, participants invent the box from scratch, which puts them in the role of creator rather than critic. In most research methods, participants react to what you show them; in Product Box, they build what they want. What someone crafts and sketches reveals motivations they will not articulate in a direct interview, so the exercise tends to surface features, messaging, and value propositions a product team would not arrive at by surveying or interviewing alone.
The physical, hands-on format also lowers social barriers. Participants who stay quiet in a focus group often become animated when cutting out paper, picking stickers, and arguing about what goes on the front of the box, and the playful framing makes it safer to express bold or unusual ideas. The shopping metaphor — a supermarket aisle full of colorful boxes competing for attention, or a tradeshow booth — taps a mental model participants already use as shoppers.
How to
Prep
1. Recruit four to eight target participants.
Recruit from the segment you are actually trying to serve. Mixing segments produces noise: participants from different segments want different things on the front of the box, and you will not be able to tell whether a recurring feature reflects a shared priority or one dominant voice. If you have access to more than eight participants, run two sessions in parallel rather than one large one.
2. Gather the materials.
Provide a blank white cardboard product box per participant or small group, colored markers, crayons, colored pencils and pens, glitter glue, plain and colored paper, and stickers — including word stickers like “New” or “Exciting” alongside stars and decorative images. Set out two or three sample product boxes per table for reference so participants have a baseline mental model of what a finished box looks like, and cover each table with butcher paper so the table itself becomes part of the working surface.
3. Set up the room.
Arrange tables so participants can work individually or in groups of two to three, with enough room to lay supplies out and walk around the box as they build. Place the sample boxes and craft supplies within reach. If you need participants to work without copying each other during construction, position the tables so participants cannot easily see neighboring boxes — but keep the room open enough that the sell-it-back presentations can happen with everyone watching.
4. Decide on the framing you will use.
You will introduce the exercise with a metaphor. Two work well: the supermarket shelf (“imagine this product on the shelf at your favorite store”) and the tradeshow, retail outlet, or public market (“imagine this product at a tradeshow booth”). Pick whichever fits your category better and stick to it.
Execution
1. Set the context with the metaphor, not the feature list.
Open the session with the metaphor you chose in Prep — the supermarket shelf or the tradeshow booth. Briefly describe the product concept or category. Do not describe specific features. The goal is to learn what participants want, not to validate your feature list. Say something like: “Imagine this product is on a store shelf next to the others you already buy. Design the box that would make you want to pick it up and take it home.”
2. Let them build.
Allow about thirty to forty-five minutes for participants to design their boxes. Circulate and observe but do not guide or suggest. If asked what to include, say “whatever would make you want to buy it.” Take notes on which supplies participants reach for, who works individually versus collaboratively, and what they pause on.
3. Run the sell-it-back, participant standing.
Have each participant or small group present their box to the room, allowing about five to ten minutes per box. This is where prioritization happens: pitching the box forces participants to decide which features lead and earn a spot on the front, which are mentioned in passing or relegated to the back, and which are dropped entirely. The staging is part of the method: make certain the participant is standing and that you, the facilitator, are sitting while they present. The participant is selling the imagined product to you, so they take the presenter’s posture and you take the audience’s, rather than answering questions from an authority. Encourage others to ask questions as buyers, not as critics — the audience’s reactions add another layer of insight.
4. Facilitate a closing discussion.
After all presentations, lead a short group discussion about common themes, surprising ideas, and disagreements. Useful prompts:
- “What did you see on other boxes that you wish you had included on yours?”
- “What was the hardest decision about what to put on the front?”
- “What did you decide to leave off entirely, and why?”
5. Document everything.
Photograph every box from all sides. Record the presentations with consent. Note key quotes, recurring themes, and any features or claims that appeared on multiple boxes.
Analysis
Analyze the boxes across multiple dimensions:
- Frequency. Which features or messages appeared on the most boxes? These are likely core value propositions, especially when they show up across multiple participants who did not see each other’s work.
- Placement. Features on the front of the box are what participants consider the primary selling point. Back-of-box features are supporting. Side-of-box and fine-print details are nice-to-haves.
- Aspirational language. The slogans and imagery participants choose reveal the outcomes they care about, which may differ from the features they list. A box that puts “weekends back” on the front is selling a different value proposition than one that puts “20 integrations” on the front, even if the feature set is identical.
- Pricing signals. If participants include pricing on their boxes, note the range and how they frame it (one-time purchase, subscription, premium versus budget positioning).
- Sticker patterns. Where participants used pre-made word stickers like “New” or “Exciting,” note which features earned the sticker. The unprompted decision to mark a capability as “new” or “exciting” is a signal independent of the descriptive copy.
- Surprises. Features or messages that you did not anticipate are often the most valuable findings. These can represent unmet needs or positioning angles your team has not explored. Compare them against your current roadmap and marketing copy — gaps are where to dig next.
- Craft skill variance Some participants are more comfortable with arts and crafts than others. Emphasize at the start that artistic quality does not matter — it is the ideas that count. Provide pre-made word and image stickers so less-confident drawers can still express specific features.
- Selection bias The exercise appeals to creative, expressive participants. Quieter or more analytical participants may be underrepresented. Pair them with a more outgoing partner in small-group formats, and weight the analysis by what shows up across multiple boxes rather than what the most expressive participant emphasized.
- Facilitator-stance bias If the facilitator stands during the sell-it-back, the participant tends to shift into “answering an authority” mode rather than “selling to a buyer” mode, which flattens the signal. Keep the participant standing and the facilitator seated.
Learn more
Case Studies
Qualcomm: Product Box for trucking-fleet customers
Luke Hohmann ran Product Box (and Speedboat) workshops with Qualcomm’s trucking-fleet customers around 2003; customer box designs informed the feature set and positioning of the DataVisor business-intelligence platform, and Qualcomm executive Joan Waltman coined the term “Innovation Games” for the technique. (corroborated by the DataVisor launch announcement, Commercial Carrier Journal, 2006)
Further reading
- Hohmann, Luke. Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play. Addison-Wesley, 2006. The primary source for Product Box, including the sell-it-back step, the supermarket-shelf framing, and the role-reversal staging during presentations. One of Hohmann’s twelve Innovation Games.
- Product Box — Luke Hohmann
- Innovation game — Wikipedia
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