In Part 1 of this series, we talked about unboxing the Apple MacBook Pro. Next, we talked about the grueling experience of unboxing Windows Vista. Today, we look at Adobe CS3. (In Part 4, I’ll talk about why all this is important.)

With CS3, Adobe made a solid attempt to compete with Apple in terms of aesthetics. The packaging itself is quite stylish, and communicates only what it needs to. Sure, there’s a big block of text on the cover, but this list of products inside the box is important to make it clear to buyers which version they’ve picked up.

Here’s a slideshow of the unboxing experience (use the arrows at the bottom to navigate).

Nice, huh? The only real issue is that the outer sleeve wraps really tightly around the cardboard box, so when you pull the sleeve off of the box, the lid tends to go with it. The first time I did this, I pulled the sleeve upwards, which had the effect of removing the lid from the cardboard box. The lid was stuck inside the sleeve. So, the little moment of seeing the cardboard box for the first time wasn’t as perfect as it should have been. Not a big deal, but Adobe clearly intended to create a nice moment here, and pulling the lid off of the box with the outer sleeve sort of ruined it.

Removing the lid reveals a large booklet and a DVD case. The booklet contains a bunch of information about how to get started with CS3 products and how they integrate. It has a nice design and was quite informative overall. The DVD case was fairly generic, however, and didn’t positively affect my first impression. Adobe used printouts that slipped into the outer sleeve of a clear, blank DVD case. Nothing special there. That said, there were three DVDs inside - one for application installers, one for content, and one for a library of training videos from Lynda.com - so the lackluster DVD case didn’t bother me.

Moving on, here’s a slideshow of the install screens.

The first 9 screens were all part of the installation process (the last 2 were for registration, which I’ll talk about in a moment). That’s right - 9 screens. First, the DMG file opened. It didn’t look nearly as good as many Mac installers. This launched another window, which contained the Setup.app file. This ran an initialization process, which eventually lead to a License Agreement. After agreeing to the license, I was given the option to choose which applications I wanted to install. Next, I chose which drive to install them on. Then I waited.

The installer ran for a really long time. On my machine, it took at least 30 minutes for all the applications to install. I’ve heard it can take over an hour on slower machines.

This was a fairly clunky process. Adobe could have cut the number of screens in half quite easily, and probably could have even gotten it down to one or two to cretae a far more elegant install experience.

Adobe also missed an obvious oppportunity here to engage users during the long wait. They could have plugged in some screencasts or marketing demos - like the ones used on the site - to highlight the new features of CS3, talk about how to get started, and so on. Instead, they showed me only progress meters as each application was installed.

The registration screen appeared the first time I launched a CS3 product, and while I appreciate that this made the install process a tiny bit shorter, it created an interruption when I thought I was all done with the administrative work. I had gone through the whole installation process, which took a large number of clicks and a long boring wait, and when I was finally ready to pop open an application and start playing around, I was interrupted and asked to register the product.

Adobe’s packaging may have been stylish compared to most other software, but the install process certainly was not as nice as I would have expected from a company that focuses so much on design.

In Part 4 of this series, I’ll talk about why all of this matters and how to make a great first impression.

Posted by Robert on May 13th, 2007