I'm a real evangelist for Human Factors, which is the art and science of making stuff that humans can use easily. There's a lot of published literature on this, and even more vacuous talk talk, but at the end of the day a great product rules the marketplace and the ones that just aren't so good come in a distant second, third, etc.

This morning I was reflecting on A2D as a key element in human factor design of consumer products.

A2D = Attention To  Details

There I was, in the small French shower with inadequate ventilation and poor light, trying to figure out which of the squeeze bottles was shampoo and which was conditioner. Given a customer-facing label space of about 4 cm width and 13 cm length, the designers had opted for pretty. There were a lot of nice colors and script and what looked to be the kind of vacuous descriptive text that people with degrees in marketing and graphic design seem to think important.

BUT

Just like every other product in the category, the designers had decided to go with a small font in a poor contrast color to label one tube "Shampoo" and the other "Revitalizing Conditioner." I know those are the words because after my shower I put my glasses on to read them. As a hyperope (farsighted guy who was in trifocals by his 30th birthday) I was forced to use the 'sample and lather' test method to figure out what order to use them in. Thankfully I didn't have to resort to taste testing..... 

Here's my hint to the folks that make this stuff - maybe you can get a bit of consumer friendly product differentiation by making the LABELING useful to users under real use conditions? 

And for the rest of you, if you're responsible for anything that normal humans use at home, please remember to have some mercy on them. If you need guidance, I've got a worksheet for this stuff...