Week 1 Lab: Unboxing Teardown

Bring a real package and test the lecture's three-logic framework against it, before we have any formulas to check your guess with

22 February 2027

Before the lab

Bring a package. Any online order from the last month with the outer box still around — the emptier and more chewed-up the better, since the marks of shipping are half of what we’re reading.

In the lab

First 10 minutes — in pairs, apply the lecture’s three-logic framework (brand experience / logistics cost / compliance) to your own package. Pick the logic that best explains the box, and find one physical feature that’s your evidence for it.
Next 20 minutes — swap packages with another pair. Argue for a different logic than the one they picked, using a feature they didn’t mention. Most packages support more than one reading; the exercise is to notice that before you commit to one.
Last 15 minutes — as a class, collect one open question per package: a claim about the box you can’t settle just by looking at it. These become the running list the next few weeks answer.

Afterwards

Keep your one-paragraph prediction. In week 4, once you have Australia Post’s actual cubic-weight formula, you’ll re-run it on the same package and check whether the logistics-cost story survives contact with the real number.

The spec

What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

you brought one real package you received in the last month, with its box, inserts and any labels intact
you can name which of the three design logics (brand experience, logistics cost, compliance) your package leans on, and point to a specific physical feature of the box as evidence
you have written down, in one paragraph, what the course's throughline claim would predict about why your package looks the way it does — a prediction we'll come back to once the later weeks give us numbers

Teaching team

Idris Fenn — tutor