[Sigia-l] Food for thought

[Paola Kathuria]

The chef Gordon Ramsay was on "Friday Night with Jonathan
Ross" last week, talking about his new restaurant in New
York and a design problem came up.

He said that there had been problems with some of the dishes,
including one of shell fish. A couple had ordered it and,
when the plates came back, he'd noticed that they'd eaten
everything, including the seaweed.

JR: "What's wrong with eating the seaweed?"

GR: "They weren't meant to - it was just there for
     decoration" [he makes a face, implying that this
     particular seaweed would have been icky-tasting)

JR: "So why'd you put it on the plate for, it they're
     not meant to eat it?!"

GR: [mumbles] "It's meant to look good".

Bah.

The problem is of implied functionality according to
association by proximity. You order a plate of food;
you get a plate with more than you asked for and
consider it a bonus, so you eat it. Makes sense.

Similarly, you call up a web page which has *sparkle*
imagery that looks like it wants to be touched. But it
doesn't do anything and the user is left frustrated.

Hmm, I wonder if there's such a thing as a food UX designer.


Paola
--
http://www.paolability.com/