Trumblog

Some  symbols are obvious, like red hexagons and yellow triangles for street signs.  Some are less well known, but unconsciously drive our understanding and decisions, such as orange being the international color for decaffeinated coffee.  At our peril we ignore these shorthand identifiers and therefore risk misunderstandings and errors.

Baking Soda, Baking Powders and Their Containers

Baking soda and baking powder are very similar.  They are both ” leavening agents” , which means that they are used to increase the volume and lighten the texture of baked goods.  They both have the word “baking” at the beginning of their names.

However, baking soda and baking powder are different. Baking powder is basically just baking soda mixed with an acid, like cream of tartar.  This means that they are not a 1:1 replacement for each other, though you can see that it is easy to whip up some fresh baking powder from scratch if necessary.  If you make the mistake of using baking soda when you should have used baking powder you’ll probably realize it when either your pancakes turn out hard and flat or with a bitter, tinny taste.

Arm and Hammer is the best known brand of baking soda and for baking powder it’s Rumford. Considering how close the two products are I have no idea why neither brand seems to sell both products, but they don’t.  Whether it was purposeful or not these two products come in two different and very distinct styles of containers.  Arm and Hammer baking soda is sold in a familiar yellow box and Rumford baking soda comes in a small red cylinder.  These styles of container have become visual shorthand for their contents.  There’s no need to read the exterior, the style of the container says it all.

The Perils Of Ignoring Expectations

If you don’t have one nearby, Trader Joe’s is a specialty grocery store that sells organic and gourmet  foods as well as staples, many with a house brand label.  It’s a niche market that people either love or hate.  A while back I thought that I bought baking powder when shopping at Trader Joe’s and didn’t find out that I had actually bought baking soda until we wondered why our pancakes tasted weird. Looking at the container on the right, you’ll understand why I made the mistake twice (once when I bought the can and again when I used the can thinking that it was baking soda).

The small red cylinder that Trader Joe’s puts its baking soda in clearly mimics Rumsford’s baking powder packaging.  Not only that, but the fact that the baking soda isn’t in the small yellow box that I, and most of America has grown to associate with baking soda is also confusing.  It’s a double whammy.  Sure the package says “Baking Soda” on it, but to shoppers and cooks who for years have associated one type of packaging with this product  why bother reading the label.  Arm and Hammer and Rumsford have been so successful in their marketing that we associate the packaging that their products come in as shorthand for the products themselves.  We’ve been conditioned to not have to look at the brand or the product name, just the type of container.  This makes it easy to mistake the Trader Joe’s baking soda for baking powder and is the reason that we label the top of  our container in order to avoid mistakes.

Learning From The Mistakes Of Others

I write this both as a warning to all of you who shop at Trader Joe’s and also as a lesson on usability. Trader Joe’s probably had good reasons for developing their Baking Soda packaging the way that they did.  I’m guessing here, but I can imagine a designer explaining how much nicer it is to have a matching set of red containers rather than the Laurel and Hardy pair of a  squat yellow box and tall thin can.   The cylinder is also a better container in general.  It’s more easily resealable, the yellow box never fully closes after it’s opened, and the canister has a handy straight metal edge at the top that is so useful for leveling off a teaspoon measure.  Smart people had good reasons for this design.  But it’s problematic because it conflicts with user expectations.

It’s a usability issues that I’ve run into myself. Many times I’ve reviewed website designs where a designer has developed a new navigational element or functionality like a search window that uses a new or different layout or icon.  We discuss how it works and it all makes sense, maybe it’s even better than what is “standard”.  But 9 out of 10 times in usability testing we run into problems because the new indicators are different from the visual shorthand that the visitors to the site expect.  They don’t see the new icons or understand what the icons are telling them.  It’s not because the designs are bad or because the visitors are stupid, it’s just that they expect something other than what they are given.  And when that happens there are problems.

These are the usability and design issues that are the hardest to uncover and prove why usability testing is so necessary.  Clients, project managers, designers, developers we all get too close to a project to realize the assumptions that we’ve made and that fresh, new, visitors won’t.  Only usability testing can uncover it and is why it’s so critical. What packaging usability issues have you run into and are you doing enough testing with your own projects?