Finding the chase and cutting to it

I qualified as a Computer Scientist 13 years ago although I had been coding tools to make my and my friends’ and family’s life easier since I was 12.  But as you gain maturity you begin to realise that the simple usability tests software coders are prescribed to use are not followed else where.

I remember my mum commenting on the way the local supermarkets were not particularly easy to use, which at the age of 13 surprised me.  How could the layout of a supermarket be subject to design and if so, how could it be wrong?

Back in 1989, the Ipswich area finally gained two “hypermarkets”, ASDA and Tescos.  Both were laid out in very similar ways: one entered the store to the fruit and vegetable aisles, both were large spaces, fairly prettily arranged, like an expanded green grocer’s.  You proceeded through to the diary and meat then chilled meals and desert sections then the dried goods: pastas and rice, tins, bread, crisps, cereals and finally biscuits before reaching the household products.  Standard stuff obviously.

If you’re vegetarian, this probably is reasonably convenient as you tend to miss out the meat aisles.  If you do eat meat though, that tends to be the focus of your meal and you then plan your meals round that focus – chicken breast with spicy sauce or stir fir or potatoes and greens with bread coated schnitzels.

So we have a dichotomy: the vegetarians can focus on their meal and the meat eaters walk past the fruit and veg to the meat and then walk back, then walk back to get the rest of the meal. If you have nothing better to do on the day, this is mildly annoying but if you’ve queued in traffic after a bad day in the office, this does not help you spend more money.

This is where the on-line versions should help but low, the on-line supermarkets are laid out in a similar way.

Strange…