Friday, March 07, 2008
I was not really aware that there was a problem, but a particular brand of milk in the Netherlands now features an indicator to show how much milk there's left. I usually just shake the thing to check whether there's something left. Although, I must admit if you're cooking and have to add exactly 250 ml's of milk, it might be handy. The milk bottle icons on the side seem A) a bit of an anachronism, and B) redundant. Halfway the carton there's this icon that says your milk carton is half-full. I'm all in favor of providing consumers with information, but this one seems to go a little bit overboard...
Via: Illustir
I was not really aware that there was a problem, but a particular brand of milk in the Netherlands now features an indicator to show how much milk there's left. I usually just shake the thing to check whether there's something left. Although, I must admit if you're cooking and have to add exactly 250 ml's of milk, it might be handy. The milk bottle icons on the side seem A) a bit of an anachronism, and B) redundant. Halfway the carton there's this icon that says your milk carton is half-full. I'm all in favor of providing consumers with information, but this one seems to go a little bit overboard...Via: Illustir
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5 reactions:
I noticed the indicator, and with the indicator I also saw that they had an extra plastic lip attached to the milk opener. I thought good design practice.
But then, why go to this trouble and not just replace the whole cardboard package by a plastic bottle with cap.
nice blog btw.
Well, one could argue that the indicator in the middle could easily be misinterpreted: What if the middle indicator showed that the bottle was 'nearly empty'? You would only know that it wasn't so because it was the middle indicator and therefore there should be at least about a half a bottle of milk left.
But then again, you would have to be a little thick-headed.
@jeroen
If you need to be thick-headed to misinterpret the information, I think it's save to say the information is redundant. You could say that it does not do any harm to give too much clarification; better be on the safe side. But I do believe there's something to be said for 'too much of a good thing' here.
I did focus more on the problem they were trying to solve. It seems that they put a lot of effort to restyle their old cardboard packages to have transparent displays, and recloseable caps. Instead of reinventing the weel, they could save a lot of money by just using the old bottle :
http://www.gardeningtipsnideas.com/images/Milk%20Bottle%2001.jpg
case of featuritis i think.
True, with transparent packaging, such as milk bottles, you would have non of these issues with indicators etc. However, I think the choice for a milk carton stems from other considerations, such as logistics (no return bottles). Here they tried to have the physical properties of a carton and add the informative properties of a milk bottle.
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