First impressions

Most of us have heard the old cliche: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The importance of making a good first impression is widely discussed today in serious psychology papers. Judgements about people and things are often based on how we first view them, and there is evidence that these impressions are not only lasting, but also frequently valid.

That being the case, one would suppose that engineers looking to bring their latest products to market would give especial attention to how they look. Taking a systematic approach, they would include packaging and enclosures as one of the major aspects of a design. Yet it is often the case that packaging is not considered until the product is about to be pushed out the door.

While it is true that the packaging of ICs has become a hot topic again, and many new techniques are being developed for stacking and interconnecting chips, one is challenged to find industry conferences and scholarly journals dealing with the creation of final enclosures for an electronic system. True, there are NEMA standards dealing with the performance attributes required of such packaging, but there is little discussion of the esthetic and material attributes of packaging that go into making a successful product. Yet companies like Apple have shown time and again that the final packaging can have a dramatic impact on the attention and acceptance a new product will find in the market.

I believe it is time for packaging design to become one of the key design criteria for electronic projects. If a product is to succeed in today’s highly crowded, competitive markets, it has only one chance to make a good impression, and that impression is often based on what the potential customer first sees.