We sit down with Dale Harper, Head of Design & Co-Founder at connected products platform io.tt, to discuss how digital experiences can unlock packaging's full potential

For those who may not know, who is io.tt and what's your area of expertise?

io.tt is a connected packaging platform. We help brands make the digital layer on their products as considered and effective as the packaging itself. Working with enterprise brands across marketing, supply chain and compliance, we build the infrastructure for QR and NFC-triggered experiences at scale: from GS1-compliant digital links to consumer-facing campaigns for gifting, loyalty and product discovery. We've been in this space since the early days, and part of some of the biggest deployments globally.

Connected packaging has been a growing topic for several years. What changes are you seeing in how brands are approaching it today?

The biggest shift is definitely the change in regulation. GS1, the organisation largely responsible for the barcodes you see on packs, wants to replace the barcode with QR codes. That is a big change. It means one code will provide data across supply chain, retailers and for a consumer’s phone scan. We’re already seeing that 41% of people scan QR codes several times a week so it is becoming part of daily life.

So the conversation around connected packaging is no longer, ‘should we add it?’; it is now ‘what should we do with it?’. Brands doing this well don’t treat it like a box-ticking exercise, they treat it as a designed element, with the same thought and intention they'd give anything else on the pack.

What are some of the most innovative examples of connected packaging you've seen recently, and what made them successful?

The examples that stand out are the ones that think holistically about how the consumer interacts with the pack and what their wants and needs are at the point of use or consumption.

We have done great work over the years for Boots, digitising their instruction manuals for their digital pain relief devices into a more accessible experience that helped people navigate the set up and use of the product while allowing them to track their pain over time.

The one I wish I’d worked on was the Schwartzkopf virtual try-on experience. It allows you to test the products virtually while you’re in-store to see if their hair dye is the right one for you. It really solves a user pain point at the consideration moment in-store.

What both have in common is that someone asked the right question first: what does the consumer actually need at this moment? That's a design question, not a technology question.

How can brands create digital experiences that genuinely add value for consumers, rather than simply adding another QR code to the pack?

What adds value is considering the full journey: what the consumer needs, where they are, what they're trying to do in that moment.

Ultimately what it must do is extend the capabilities of the pack. It’s no longer a QR code with an experience attached. It’s an entirely new touchpoint in the consumer journey that just so happens to be triggered by a code. That mindset shift is the most important thing; and it starts in the design process, not at the end of it.

As a new Pentawards sponsor, what excites you most about engaging with the global packaging design community?

Firstly, we want to drive awareness of the upcoming regulation but ultimately we need to make sure designers are now part of the conversation around it. The packaging design community has spent decades establishing the visual conventions that make products readable: where to look, what to expect, how to navigate. Those conventions don't exist yet in the connected space. The Pentawards community are exactly the right people to help set them, and we want to be part of that process.

For packaging designers and brands who are curious about connected packaging but unsure where to start, what advice would you give them, and how can io.tt support that journey?

The simplest starting point is to audit what you've already got. Scan the codes on your own work, or the brands you work with, and look honestly at what's there. Most people find a redirect to a homepage, a broken link, or something that has nothing to do with the design they spent months crafting.

From there, the most important shift is bringing the connected experience into the design process from the start, not briefing it in once the pack is finalised. The call to action on the physical pack needs to align with where it's sending people. The QR code itself should feel like it belongs to the design, not a functional add-on in the corner.

That's where io.tt comes in. We give brands the infrastructure to build and evolve connected experiences at scale, in their own branding. The code can go live early and the experience behind it developed and updated as you go.

What's one misconception the packaging industry still has about connected packaging?

That it's primarily a marketing tool. It gets briefed by marketing, measured on campaign metrics, and treated as a temporary activation. But the QR code on a pack isn't a campaign, it’s now an always-on touchpoint. It needs to work on day one and on day three hundred. The brands that understand this stop thinking about connected experiences as activations and start treating them as a permanent, designed layer of the product. That's a very different brief, and a much more interesting design problem.

Looking ahead, what do you think packaging will be capable of in 10 years' time that might seem ambitious today?

In ten years, the friction will be gone. Scanning will feel as natural as reading a label. The bigger shift is that far more of what currently lives on-pack – ingredients, legal copy, certifications, sustainability credentials – might have migrated to the digital layer, freeing up the physical surface to do what it does best: create desire.

With the introduction of new wearable devices like smart glasses, I do think a lot of interactions will start to become more passive, which means we’re no longer just considering mobile experiences as the end destination but an ecosystem of interfaces that can respond to devices and environments seamlessly. For a brand it becomes even more important that this content is engaging and considered.

Find out more about io.tt here.