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Previous: Impassable staircase | Main | Next: Yahoo thesaurus page
February 2, 2007 12:03 AM
Broken: Nesquick instructions
Robert Hoekman Jr. points out:
This Nesquick bottle of chocolate milk instructs thirsty consumers to:
Remove seal
Shake well
...in that order.
Obviously, this is not an ideal workflow. And to think - several people with decision-making powers must have seen this label before it reached my hands!
Is there another lid that goes on top of the seal? If so, not broken. First, removing the seal removes the vacuum and leaves more air in the bottle, allowing better shakeage. Second, whenever I shake something that has a seal on it (mostly orange juice) and then remove the seal, the newly formed froth always sploofs out. That's probably what they're trying to prevent.
Huh? If there were another lid, you couldn't see the instructions before having removed that other lid. Broken.
I have actually bought this brand several times and never have I thought to myself "ok, it says shake well and remove seal quite a few times, so let me count how many times so I can follow those directions exactly" or had I thought, after seeing the writing over and over that one was specifically meant to be before the other.
Why exactly is this considered broken? I understand what the poster listed as being broken, but come on, it doesn't have a set of directions saying that step one is to remove the seal then step two is to shake well... there is no order listed... and if you don't have the common sense to realize that if you remove the seal then start shaking a liquid filled bottle around with no covering that its a silly thing to do, you have a lot bigger issues than just this...
Oh, the bottle does have another, screw-on cap that goes over this seal by the way.
Let the comments to me from the people who feel that no one should have any common sense or personal responsibility in their life begin...
"... any common sense or personal responsibility in their life ..."
Another person who doesn't 'get' Broken Design. Life is hard enough without things deliberately designed wrong. We as a people get stressed when we burn through brain-cycles trying to figure out what 1 of 5000 companies calls "common sense". We have to second-guess every new product or service we encounter. Why don't companies /think/ about their customers?
That being said: not broken.
It says "remove seal", not "remove lid". It's referring to the tamper-proof seal. Follow the directions literally, you'll do just fine.
"... any common sense or personal responsibility in their life ..."
Another person who doesn't 'get' Broken Design. Life is hard enough without things deliberately designed wrong. We as a people get stressed when we burn through brain-cycles trying to figure out what 1 of 5000 companies calls "common sense". We have to second-guess every new product or service we encounter. Why don't companies /think/ about their customers?
That being said: not broken.
It says "remove seal", not "remove lid". It's referring to the tamper-proof seal. Follow the directions literally, you'll do just fine.
"... any common sense or personal responsibility in their life ..."
Another person who doesn't 'get' Broken Design. Life is hard enough without things deliberately designed wrong. We as a people get stressed when we burn through brain-cycles trying to figure out what 1 of 5000 companies calls "common sense". We have to second-guess every new product or service we encounter. Why don't companies /think/ about their customers?
That being said: not broken.
It says "remove seal", not "remove lid". It's referring to the tamper-proof seal. Follow the directions literally, you'll do just fine.
ahhhh.. I knew it wouldn't take long... I do "get" broken design, just not broken people who think they should never have to think for themselves in this world...
There are most certainly "broken things I see every day, and many, if not most, of the things posted here can be considered broken, but just because you have to actually think or read an entire set of instructions, doesn't mean something is automatically broken.
My 3 year old son opens this brand all the time. He can't read the instructions, maybe that is why he doesn't have a problem with it.
I think it is somewhat broken, in that the directions are written in the wrong order, but I have never known anyone to read those anyway. I have found that with this type of bottle, the "lid" actually forms no seal against the bottle, thus allowing the contents to spill out when shaken. I think this is a more broken design.
"...broken people who think they should never have to think for themselves in this world..."
Product Design - by definition - helps people accomplish tasks intuitively so they can "think for themselves" about the IMPORTANT things in life.
Why should a juice bottle demand our full and undivided attention, even if only for a moment? Multiply that by a hundred badly-designed items a day and you're eating into the brain-cycles of someone trying to cure cancer or put a rocket on the Moon.
If the directions are wrong, it doesn't matter whether it's common sense to do it right. Broken is broken. For example, if you bought a car and it said "turn steering wheel to the left to make a right turn," that would be broken, even though it's very likely that nobody would ever do it wrong.
You guys are not seeing what is really broken with this:
The words "remove seal" are printed ON THE SEAL. As if someone is going to try to drink it through the seal.
If I see a seal on a drink, I can figure out without any thinking at all that I must remove the seal before I drink the product.
Comments on this entry are closed
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Duh. They're obviously telling you to shake the seal after removing it, not the drink.
You know... to remove all of the chocolate milk before you recycle it.
Posted by: Yale at February 2, 2007 12:46 AM