Jason Robb

I’ve been putting some thought into interface designs lately. Yesterday, I observed a few instances of poorly designed interfaces and considered how I could improve them.

Visiting the grocery store, for me, is always an exhilarating trip. The madness of aisle after aisle of branded products always gets me twitching before the checkout. Does this happen to anyone else? Well, I was hunting down some cucumbers in the produce section. I had a problem with the tags, they didn’t match up with the layout of the veggies below them. There were a few different kinds of cucumbers, and being an amateur cucumber shopper, I didn’t want to get the wrong kind. I would have liked a picture of the product on the card, or a smaller, name-only tag closer to the cucumbers.

Then, at the self-checkout, the payment type choices looked too similar. At the least, I expected the Cash/Money option to pop out at me. But it didn’t, it was the same general contrast and tone as the credit/debit and other options. I thought, “it should be green”. The other images could have been simplified as well. I wanted a button that said CASH, not a poorly rendered image of a faded bill and some coins.

My microwave is ugly, and the color emphasis is on the wrong buttons. “I have a clock in my kitchen that sometimes cooks things.” I think Dan Cook said that once, and I couldn’t agree more. There must be two dozen buttons on my microwave and I’ve only ever used one of them. The Start/add a minute button, and of course the clunky plastic button that flings the door open when I’m finished. Why all the options? Cook, or don’t cook.

The next time you’re frustrated with an interface, think about how you could improve it.