Lessons from the Laughing Cow

J and I have been doing The South Beach Diet. It's going well. It's a healthy diet with three meals and two snacks a day. We're eating things like smoked salmon frittata, cracked pepper steak, turkey roll-ups with cilantro mayo -- and we're losing weight. However this diet has me cooking constantly. It's a ton of work to keep up with all these tasty meals and snacks. Washing vegetables, chopping vegetables, cleaning up from chopping vegetables. Making sauces and spreads and marinades. Ugh.

In the course of doing all this cooking, I've come to know the Laughing Cow. She makes my life easier and I will be a loyal fan from this day forward. Plus she's taught me a valuable design lesson.

After making one of our first fancy breakfasts, I was preparing lunches and snacks for the day, one of which was celery sticks stuffed with a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese. The Laughting Cow packaging is novel; a light cardboard circular shell that holds eight wedges of foil-wrapped cream cheese. Cute. Different. But I'm not looking for cute when I've got serious food prep taking over my life. I want fast and easy. I approached the cow with dread, certain I would be fighting my way through this packaging. Wet hands, thin paper sealing the package = more mess.

Not so! There's a fine, red string encircling the package. Pull the string, it cuts through the paper seal, and the package opens right up. The top then fits back on and houses the remaining wedges.

Nice. Right back in the fridge without an additional plastic bag or container. Trust me, when you are doing as much food prep as I've been doing, this matters.

The next challenge was the wedge itself. I'm thinking okay, this is going to be a gooey mess. I could already see half the product sticking to the foil and me trying to eke out my full day's portion. When you're dieting you want every last morsel of your allotted rations!

But the smart people at Laughing Cow anticipated this and put this little tab on the wedge. Lift the tab straight up and foil peels back cleanly. No mess. No waste. The cheese stands alone!

Small things but as they say, the devil is in the details.

What design lessons did I take away from the Laughing Cow?

Customer experience is king. As I approach my design projects I want to remember to think about the customer interacting with this thing I'm making. Imagine them in the environment where they will have it in their hands--holding it, opening it,  navigating, reading, using it.

One of the projects currently on my screen is a promotional wrap for a seminar handout. I've been focused on what elements to include to showcase the speaker’s other offerings and reinforce his credibility. The Laughing Cow has made me pause and think beyond my marketing message. As I envision the seminar attendees holding the handout I wonder, what will make their interaction with this piece a better experience? Will the message get lost in a room with less than ideal lighting? Will they be seated at tables, or will this piece need to be sturdy enough to provide a writing surface? Don't know. But I'm glad the Laughing Cow folks thought beyond the grocery store shelf. And I will too.

I'm adding "Envision customer interacting with product after purchase. Describe." to my design brief template. Thank you Laughing Cow.