Helpful Packaging for Flooring DIYers

Hello DIYers

We are a team of MBA and Design/Engineering students at North Carolina State University (NCSU), and as part of a design/innovation course we have come up with what we think of as a helpful and and informative way to package flooring (tiles, hardwood, laminate etc.) for DIYers. We would like to solicit your input on some aspects of our design through a very short (approximately 5 minutes) survey.

The link to the survey is: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx? sm=XQc63PByCkCNWS_2fnN62SRw_3d_3d

If these kinds of posts are frowned upon in your community, then please accept our apologies.

Thanks in advance.

Post edited by: depacketizer, at: 2007/11/24 00:03

Hi depacketizer, welcome to the forum.

No, those surveys aren't frowned upon here

That said, I would like it a lot if you could be posting some of your experiences here on this forum, so our members can read it here as well.

Absolutely.

A couple of our team members (including myself) are DIYers ourselves. Our team was formed as a part of Product Design course work for MBA, Design and Engineering students. We've done laminate flooring and tile projects. Our frustrations with the current state of flooring packaging was instrumental in us choosing this project. Eg. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a powered Jamb saw, so I was cutting the door jambs, poorly, by hand. Another pet-peeve of mine was trying to get rid of the carpet padding. It was glued on to survive a nuclear holocaust. I ended up scraping it all out by hand, as once again, I didn't know that there were solvents that would've made it easier.

Early on in the project, we conducted in-depth ,face-to-face interviews with about 40 DIYers and identified the issues people had with packaging (not helpful, hard to carry around, hard to see what's inside etc.). We came up with a design that best addressed those issues. Right now we are building a prototype.

The purpose of the survey is to get the views of the wider DIY community and also to gauge DIYers' perception of our packaging vs. the traditional cardboard box.

There is a very strong possibility that our proposed solution can become a reality, which makes the input from the DIYers even more valuable (how often can we as regular consumers get manufacturers' attention, right?).

This is an opportunity for you to tell manufacturers what annoys/frustrates you, and what better packaged material is worth to you. The survey is fairly short (approx. 5 minutes). and we are extremely grateful of your providing us with your opinions.

Thanks.

Great, depacketizer - that was very thorough and comprehensible. Thank you.

I wish you luck with the survey because that means more 'boots on the ground' helpful material will result from that for the IDY'ers.


Let me know if I can be of assistance to you