JUGgernaut
A New York Times article caused a bit of a stir in the design community this week. In the recent past, success stories like Target’s ClearRx pill bottle, OXO GoodGrips, and Apple’s iPod have put design front-and-center in the public eye. They make the benefits of good design tangible. The average consumer “gets it”.
The gallon milk jug is another of those objects that is thoughtlessly accepted. It’s been around for a long time with very little change, and almost everyone uses them. It’s a perfect opportunity for design to make a palpable difference.
Creative Edge is a product design firm created with the express purpose of reinventing the way Superior Dairy, its sister company, does business. To that end, they set themselves a goal of removing the need for milk crates. They were able to design a stackable milk jug. The implications of this seemingly simple change are most impressive. 224 gallons of milk fit in the same amount of space taken by 144 traditional gallon jugs in their crates. This means that they take less room to store both in the freezer and in the trucks that deliver them. Shipping costs are significantly reduced, labor has been cut by half, and even water use has decreased due to the fact that the crates no longer have to be cleaned. Without the crates, workers spend less time in freezers, an environment that leads to more health claims than any other in the industry. The new design is a huge win for the dairy and the stores. The savings are also seen by the customers, who pay 10 to 20 cents a gallon less.
So what’s the problem? From the NYT article:
“I hate it,” said Lisa DeHoff, a cafe owner shopping in a Sam’s Club here.
“It spills everywhere,” said Amy Wise, a homemaker.
“It’s very hard for kids to pour,” said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.
One woman interviewed stated that her family probably spills a cup of milk for every gallon they open. Creative Edge claims that by moving the spout to the edge of the jug instead of the center, it is easier to pour—more like a pitcher. They even rounded the bottom corner so that you can roll the jug forward to pour without lifting it. They named it the Rock ’N Pour milk pitcher.
Sam’s Club is going so far as to teach customers how to pour from the new jugs. To my mind, this is a bad sign. Should I have to be taught how to pour a liquid into a glass? That’s a skill I mastered a long time ago. Surely they tested prototypes. It seems to me that it would not have been difficult to design the spout so that it would pour properly. Green design is a wonderful thing, and I’m impressed by what Creative Edge has accomplished. However, I’m severely disappointed that they did not take the users into consideration in their design.
It may already be a moot point. With retail behemoths like Walmart, Costco, and Sam’s Club behind the new jugs, you’ll likely be learning to pour from them sooner or later.
