Paper

9 1/8 x 6 11/16 x 2" (23 x 17 x 5 cm)

Out of the Box is an easy-to-understand mobile phone—instruction manual specifically aimed at senior citizens. Designers Clara Gaggero and Adrian Westaway worked with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, an interdisciplinary design-research unit devoted to projects aimed at improving people’s lives, especially the elderly and disabled. The outcome was this mobile-phone packaging that doubles as an instruction manual based on familiar non-digital communication. Seniors often find learning new technologies frustrating, especially, the designers explain, “as they apply analogue modes of learning to the digital experience—looking in the box for help that is not there.” Here, the box is also a bound book that contains the phone. The new owner leafs through the pages of the book, gradually encountering both assembly instructions and the corresponding hardware parts, which are integrated within the bound book. Once the user is comfortable with the workings of the phone, the package can be stored on a bookshelf.