More Factory Kitchen Interactions

Back in April last year I authored this post on some interactions in our office kitchen. The other day I found another I wanted to share as it touches on a good aspect of design.

Its morning, you fire up the workstation, and grab your coffee cup.  Upon filling your cup (unless you like it black) you turn to the sugar, creamer, or both.  This is what you see with your pre coffee blurry vision:

Let's bend down a little closer:

Still hard to tell, eh.  I've had to learn the hard way to double check before pouring anything into my coffee.  I don't care for milk or cream - and this goes double for powder creamer.

So the issue here is different things should look different.

I imagine "Highland Estates" benefits from such efficiency in packaging and font conservation yet this could be better.  Think of a restaurant where the sugar comes in a glass dispenser and the creamer in a pitcher.

In a less fancy place perhaps you encounter something like this:

Some free design advice for Highland Estates.  If you must continue with unified packaging please at least put a picture of a creamer pitcher on your creamer canister and a sugar dispenser on your sugar canister.  The pictures would serve as an icon and help my pre-caffeinated brain leverage its memory and prior learning.

_erik

Comments

[Tim Waldock]

Erik,
That goes against all our discussions about consistency !!

[Anthony Hauck]

Not really. Similar features should behave in similar ways e.g. tools that use sketch mode but elements that are different need to convey this somewhere less they be confused.  I dont mean to oversimplify.  Consistancy is important but there are many factors in a gooddesign or product such as affordance, differentiation, simplicity, user experience, ect..