... and I'm not going to take this any more!

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February 06, 2008 | ... and I'm not going to take this any more! | 10255 hit(s)

It can be hard to implement change, and one of the hardest things about it is to recognize the need for change in the first place. It's easy to take the status quo as, well, the status quo. This is especially true for things that seem like they've just been the way they are forever.

Let's talk about milk. I can remember (barely) when milk came in glass bottles. They were attractive, some with sinuous curves, and the heavy glass felt solid. They were practical; the bottles were returned, washed, and reused.[1] But they had their impractical side as well -- as noted, they had to be returned. Plus they were heavy, and anyone who's ever dropped a half-gallon bottle full of milk appreciates that they made a hell of a (dangerous) mess.

But people lived with milk bottles and their limitations for a generation or more. Coz you have to focus on the shortcomings in order to think about improvements.

At some point, some genius invented the milk carton, known under the brand name Pure-Pak. This was a big leap. It's lightweight and sanitary.[2] The cheap materials make it disposable (these days, recyclable) -- one whole leg of the milk-delivery process gone, just like that. It took some imagination to conceive of this level of change.

The Pure-Pak container is ubiquitous; for most people, it's been around essentially forever. In fact, it's so commonplace that it took some thinking to realize that it's not really ideal. The square shape favors transport and storage, but it's not great for handling -- for example, children can't handle a full half-gallon Pure-Pak container very well. (But at least when they drop it there isn't broken glass everywhere.) And most people at one time or another have cursed the "easy-open" spout that is never easy and sometimes doesn't want to open.

Eventually another genius thought some about this. These days, the square milk carton has a pour spout. Thus at least the problem of opening and closing the carton is solved. (Or is it?)

In the meantime, the erstwhile milk bottle had also gone off on another evolutionary path, namely the plastic jug. As noted, the Pure-Pak container is hard enough to wrestle with when it's a half-gallon container. A gallon? Eight pounds? Forget it.[3] A designer somewhere came up with a jug that was somewhat square (storage again), cheap enough to be disposable (plastic), and -- the stroke of genius -- had an integrated handle. If people wanted to buy milk by the gallon[4], here was a practical container for them. Refrigerators began appearing that had special wide shelves in the door to accommodate gallon jugs.

Another generation passes and the plastic milk jug becomes a fixture. But really, is the gallon jug so perfect? Consider that the opening in the jug is close to the middle. When you try to pour out of a full milk jug, odds are good that you'll dribble and miss the glass. Plus the squat shape of the jug means that the weight distribution isn't great. And if you've ever used a plastic jug to try to pour in a hurry, you'll also have noted that the liquid comes out at its own pace.

Could this be improved? Well, people are trying. Costco has introduced a new milk jug that is square and that pours from the corner. Some people don't like it (#, #). But it's gotten them thinking about what makes good design in a milk container.

Why are we talking about milk again? Oh, yeah -- people used hundreds of millions of milk containers in the last 100 years or so. But it took some effort to not be satisfied with the commonplace, and to start thinking about what the containers' limitations were and how they might be improved.

You don't have to be a product designer to have insights like this. Obviously, if you do create things -- software, cell phones, milk jugs -- you have constant opportunity to think critically about where the flaws are. But you can use the same kind of thinking anywhere. The next time you use your kitchen, consider whether everything you need is right where you need it, whether things could be more convenient, whether you're ever annoyed by something. You can do it for your office, garage, car, wherever.

What it takes is practice in sensing where the sticking points are -- to realize that that bottle really is awkward, that those two steps to the cupboard are unnecessary, that having to click four times to get email is irritating. And then think about how to fix it.

[1] A memory of my early days in Mexico was that soda-pop bottles were (are?) reused rather than just recycled, and it was the norm, actually, to get drinks in bottles that often looked like they'd been around the block a few times.

[2] Till your brother drinks out of the spout, sorry.

[3] If I recall correctly, there was a brief period when you could get gallons of milk in huge Pure-Pak containers that had a plastic handle on the top.

[4] Which they do, at least in the US, where we've been convinced that large quantities of milk are good food for young and old. As Harold McGee notes, however, what we in the US call "lactose intolerance" is a misnomer; only a minority of human adults (essentially, those descended from Northern European stock) continue to generate the enzyme lactase after weaning and can therefore digest milk. In most parts of the world, milk is consumed by adults, if at all, in some sort of pre-digested way -- cheese, yogurt, etc. It really should be called "lactose tolerance" and noted as an anomaly in human development.

John 07 Feb 08 - 1:36 AM

We still get milk delivered daily - in glass bottles. I don't think anything larger would fit in my mother's non-US sized fridge to be honest. Maybe the size of US containers has something to do with the amount of growth hormones in US milk? ;-)

mike 07 Feb 08 - 8:03 AM

We had milk delivery in the UK as well, which, in typical UK style :-) seemed suited to the needs of a generation before. The milk arrived on the doorstep around 8:30, which was after my wife and I had both already gone to work. So it had an opportunity to, um, age all day until we got home in the evening. The bottles were cute, tho.

After several weeks of this, we gave up on the milk float and joined the rest of Britain, fighting our way thru the Saturday-morning throngs at Tesco to get milk. In plastic jugs. If there was any left.

Anonymous 07 Feb 08 - 8:56 AM

Yuck. Nice warm cheesy milk doesn't sound good.

Our milkie has been and gone by 6am, but N. Ireland is one of the few places that still offers this service.

Kim 07 Feb 08 - 10:45 AM

At first I laughed at "Let's talk about milk," and then was surprised to find that this is nearly as provocative a topic as the Girl Scouts. Heh.

It is still possible to get yuppified organic milk delivery, in Seattle and other cities (and separate from the large-chain grocery delivery or organic hippie produce boxes that are fairly common). Smith Brothers Dairy, for example: http://www.smithbrothersfarms.com/

And...my dad was a milkman (no, not a punchline) before I was born; drove for Darigold, I think. Somewhere I have a snapshot of him posed with his sunny yellow truck. I remember the wooden milk box on our front porch, and more vividly remember the neighbors who had bothered to carefully paint theirs so that it matched the body and trim colors of their home.

Alan 07 Feb 08 - 11:03 AM

I wonder if the Costco effort is more about making transport more efficient than it is ease of use by the consumer. There was a story in the paper recently where Costco said that, among other things to make the company more energy efficient, they're moving to square tubs for their cashews. The square shape, as opposed to the current round tub, will save something like 400 truckloads a year.

Obviously if people won't buy the rectangular jug because they don't like using it then Costco isn't doing themselves any favors. It's worthwhile to think about competing design factors. Ease of use is usually just one.

mike 07 Feb 08 - 2:19 PM

@Alan -- Yeah, I think that Costco's redesign has at least as much to do with their own needs as those of the consumers. That's probably even more true with the Pure-Pak container -- not only did it pack tight, but as I say, the dairy industry was able to say goodbye (except as noted in other comments) to the whole headache of the return chain.

Still, I think that the Costco design in theory is also an improvement for the consumer, assuming that the corner spout works, or at least works well enough to be better than the spout in the traditional gallon jug. Ideally, it's win-win -- better for the company and better for the customer. I confess that I haven't actually used the Costco container yet (not sure why; it's not as if I never go to Costco), so I haven't drawn any conclusions based on empirical trials.

Even if we leave out the manufacturers' side of the design question, I think we can see a progression in the design of containers that has benefitted the consumer. Some changes benefit the consumer more obviously than others, like the relatively new spout on the side of Pure-Pak containers, for example. But I agree that it's a good idea to consider up front (as a consumer) whether a design change is actually an improvement.

Now I'm curious whether a design change has ever been an out-and-out negative for consumers, but prevailed anyway. Myself, I'd vote for plastic grocery bags.

mike weber 10 Sep 08 - 8:44 PM

Refilled soda bottles were the norm as recently as the early 1970s.

Since Coca-Cola bottlers were not company-owned in those days, each bottler (whose territory might be a whole state or just a portion of one) got his glass bottle made locally, and the name of the originating city was molded into the glass, but the bottles were re-used in whatever city they wound up in.

When i was in my teens, my friends and i used to check the city names on our Coke bottles to see whose cam from furthest away (i lived in South Carolina).

One time i got a somewhat battered bottle that had originally come from Honolulu...

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