What I Hate about Salads
Last week I was having lunch with a friend of mine at a Mexican restaurant, and in the interest of not passing out into a food coma during the afternoon after we returned to work, we both had salads. As my friend got to the bottom of his, he pointed out something about his salad.
"These chunks of [some component of the salad] should be diced up into larger squares and not these flat little strips. I can't grab them with the fork."
This comment made me laugh. My friend is a trained chef, so he knows a thing or two about food preparation, and when he criticizes people for their efforts in preparing food, I know that he actually has a point worth heeding, and he isn't just blowing off steam because he's really angry about something else, like high gas prices or the economy or whatever frustrates people these days.
I had never thought about it before: usability in food. I've actually thought about how much I hate to order a salad in a restaurant because there's really no easy way of eating them. Sure, we have a fork, and then we kind of stab at the goddamned thing in an effort to get a good variety of salad fixins onto the fork with each bite. Depending on the salad, this can be a really difficult thing to do. Sometimes, like with my friend's salad, there are pieces that you just can't stab at deeply enough to get up. Or maybe you can, but you can't do it without scraping the plate underneath and making that really face-wrenching horrible squeal of metal on plate. So, instead, you try and get underneath those pieces with a scooping motion, using some kind of reverse magician-pulls-the-tablecloth-out-from-under-the-dishes kind of sleight of hand to get all the stuff on top of the fork. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't, and it's just plain maddening. This is why I'm such a big fan of burritos. Simple, encapsulated food.
A few weeks ago, I ranted and raved on here about a door knob that really irked me and ruined my afternoon. A couple weeks later, the fires in Santa Barbara forced me to evacuate the little nest of renter's insurance-covered junk that comprises my apartment, and I went to spend a few nights with my friend, the aforementioned chef dude. On his bookshelf, I found a book called The Design of Everyday Things. In the very first chapter, the author talks about the frustrations of poor doorknob design.
Needless to say, I bought this book the very next day. As it turns out, it's kind of a classic, and has become required reading in a lot of engineering schools. I can see why. Often times, the people responsible for creating things we use every day get caught up in trying to add lots of gizmos and features and things, but just end up needlessly complicating matters. Good design is not easy. Good, self-explanatory design for functional objects is much, much harder.
Anyway, go buy the book. It's good. And it reminds you that we're not little piles of flesh that don't impact one another. Everything we create has purpose, and often part of that purpose is to be used by others. Screw the status quo. You can always do better and help others. And don't tolerate bad work from others.
In case you don't really want to read the book, you can view the following parody video. It's a hyperbole, and a perfect (and funny) example of engineering power run amok without any considerations for usability or testing. It also has a thing or two to say about the junk they put on the side of product packaging:
Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Sh*t That Doesn't F*cking Work
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
"These chunks of [some component of the salad] should be diced up into larger squares and not these flat little strips. I can't grab them with the fork."
This comment made me laugh. My friend is a trained chef, so he knows a thing or two about food preparation, and when he criticizes people for their efforts in preparing food, I know that he actually has a point worth heeding, and he isn't just blowing off steam because he's really angry about something else, like high gas prices or the economy or whatever frustrates people these days.
I had never thought about it before: usability in food. I've actually thought about how much I hate to order a salad in a restaurant because there's really no easy way of eating them. Sure, we have a fork, and then we kind of stab at the goddamned thing in an effort to get a good variety of salad fixins onto the fork with each bite. Depending on the salad, this can be a really difficult thing to do. Sometimes, like with my friend's salad, there are pieces that you just can't stab at deeply enough to get up. Or maybe you can, but you can't do it without scraping the plate underneath and making that really face-wrenching horrible squeal of metal on plate. So, instead, you try and get underneath those pieces with a scooping motion, using some kind of reverse magician-pulls-the-tablecloth-out-from-under-the-dishes kind of sleight of hand to get all the stuff on top of the fork. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't, and it's just plain maddening. This is why I'm such a big fan of burritos. Simple, encapsulated food.
A few weeks ago, I ranted and raved on here about a door knob that really irked me and ruined my afternoon. A couple weeks later, the fires in Santa Barbara forced me to evacuate the little nest of renter's insurance-covered junk that comprises my apartment, and I went to spend a few nights with my friend, the aforementioned chef dude. On his bookshelf, I found a book called The Design of Everyday Things. In the very first chapter, the author talks about the frustrations of poor doorknob design.
Needless to say, I bought this book the very next day. As it turns out, it's kind of a classic, and has become required reading in a lot of engineering schools. I can see why. Often times, the people responsible for creating things we use every day get caught up in trying to add lots of gizmos and features and things, but just end up needlessly complicating matters. Good design is not easy. Good, self-explanatory design for functional objects is much, much harder.
Anyway, go buy the book. It's good. And it reminds you that we're not little piles of flesh that don't impact one another. Everything we create has purpose, and often part of that purpose is to be used by others. Screw the status quo. You can always do better and help others. And don't tolerate bad work from others.
In case you don't really want to read the book, you can view the following parody video. It's a hyperbole, and a perfect (and funny) example of engineering power run amok without any considerations for usability or testing. It also has a thing or two to say about the junk they put on the side of product packaging:
Sony Releases New Stupid Piece of Sh*t That Doesn't F*cking Work
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.