Jan 16 2008
What a 10-Minute Rice Bag Teaches Us About Usability
Just as evolution is the great unifying theory of humanity (in that evolution is the core catalyst for life, behavior, war, sex, innovation, etc), so to is usability the great unifying theory of consumer product design.
Since all consumer products have to be used by your customers, understanding how to make your product more useful is an absolute must.
Still, it’s rather troubling how many usability mistakes we see in consumer products.
Still, why bother usability testing consumer goods? The 10-minute Success rice bag is a great example of why it’s not only helpful, but absolutely necessary.
Take a look at this bag your correspondent recently cooked:
Look closely at how the bag tears: the built in tear-point — positioned by Success — causes the bag to split the cooking instructions in two pieces, splitting the text.
A simple test of sending this rice to a few real homes to be cooked and served to real people would have quickly shown this usability flaw, and saved Success from this embarrassing mistake.
A few tips on consumer home products usability testing:
- It’s vital to test in a real setting, e.g. in the home of a person cooking
- Don’t interact or help the user in any way, just watch (or better yet, video tape it so you don’t even need to be there interrupting the kitchen setting)
- Interview the tester after the cooking, but don’t ask leading questions
- Run about 3 sets of tests, with each test set including about 5 homes