The Great UX Detective: Packing Slips
User experience is everywhere around us, so it’s no surprise when you stumble upon the ‘uh-oh’ moments when engaging with experiences that support our day-to-day lives. And let’s remember, UX in not confined to digital screens! This one is a great example — the packing slip.
The simple question to start with… what is a packing slip? Packing slips are printed sheets (or stickers) that summarize the customer order to ensure that the associate packing the box includes all the items. Often printed in grayscale (to save on ink costs), pack slips are a communication tool. As an associate, I can scan down the list to ensure all items are accounted for. And as a customer, I’m able to do the same thing since it might have been a few days, or even over a week since placing the order. Many businesses utilize barcode scanning to validate order accuracy, but some still rely on manual checks.
I received a delivery last week — there were around 5 or 6 items in the box. After unpacking my items, I realized that I only got a quantity of ‘one’ instead of a quantity of ‘two’ for a particular product I had ordered. I quickly glanced at the pack slip sticker on the side of the box to confirm that my quantity of two was listed on the summary. Indeed it was! At this point, I’m wondering what happened? With no barcode in place, this was a manual validation that didn’t rely on technology to confirm accuracy.
For all the UX folks out there, here are some clues I considered that might have led to the mis-pack.
We Scan Information Quickly
We have learned that humans tend to read left to right, top to bottom. And when presented in a list format, we’re incredibly efficient at scanning things quickly. Better yet, when content is printed in grayscale, we don’t need to slow down to process color changes! And in this case, introducing multiple ink colors on a packing slip is super costly, so we avoid this altogether.
We See Things Better at Sight Level
Have you ever watched someone try to read things while having to look down or look up? You’ll often find that we have to maneuver our bodies to make that sight level work, and sometimes this can be physically uncomfortable! Ouch! Keeping information at sight level avoids compromising our physical space, so I wondered if the associate packing my order may not have had a proper view to validate my info? Maybe not likely, but possible.
We Group Similar Things Together
Ah ha! This one seems to have some weight to it. If the pack slip is using black ink, and all quantities are listed with the quantity of ‘one’ being the most common, it would be so easy to skip over a quantity of ‘two’ or more. Why? Because it all looks the same when scanning the information quickly! If the pack slip utilized a visual change for any quantity greater than one, it would cause a pause in cognition as the associate considers the visual communication. This could be as simple as making a black box around a quantity of two with a white number (as opposed to a black number for quantity of one). And voila! A simple UX fix that could reduce mis-packs in the future and promote happy customers!
Let’s Talk About It
Have you ever done any UX detective work? What’s your story?