On Monday, Paul wrote about the common nuisance of a missing bolt in a piece of self-assembled furniture. He argued that to cut costs, companies often give their customers only the minimal amount of fasteners needed to do the job. If there is any screw-up (no pun intended) and a piece gets left out, there is no room for error. Paul suggested that an ethical and cost-effective solution would be to just add a few extra pieces in the bag, as the cost of a few bolts would more than outweigh the cost of customer frustration and the resources spent correcting the error.

It seems to me that another reason why companies make mistakes like this is not merely because of cost, but simply because they don’t care that much about little things like nuts and bolts. A cracked or missing shelf gets most of the attention because it is easy to spot and expensive to replace, but a cheap bit of metal in a bag goes unnoticed.

Doing the right thing starts with the smallest thing. It doesn’t take much to ruin an experience. It’s happened to all of us, at one time or another: an expensive stereo with a remote that doesn’t come with batteries; a fancy bed-and-breakfast with no shampoo in the shower; no pickle with your sandwich. If that little thing was there as it should be, you’d probably never notice, but when it’s missing, the whole design gestalt can be compromised.

Step one, then, is not to overlook the nuts and bolts. No hardware, no bookshelf.

Step two is to ask: what’s your system for making sure the nuts and bolts are always there? And, if they’re missing, how quickly can that mistake be fixed?

I like Paul’s simple solution of adding more hardware, but for something that critical, there has to be a backup plan. Are there clear instructions on what to do if pieces go missing? Is it easy for the customer to ask for them? How quickly can they be replaced? Make it right; get the user experience back on track.

We can take a lesson from the Simpsons. When Lisa and Marge discover their Vincent Price’s Egg Magic is missing vital egg feet, they call the number on the box and Price’s grandson Jody promptly hand-delivers them. Now that’s design ethics in action!

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I wrote a post a while back about a conundrum I faced—which side of a can of Red Bull should display the label: the side facing the customer or the drinker? On one hand, I argued, people want others to notice what they are drinking, so it is important for the logo to face outwards.

Earlier this week, a reader commented that the logo wasn’t that important – the unique, narrow shape of the can was how people would recognize the brand. I thought this was a good point, and it reminded me of something I’d read frequently in interviews with Matt Groening about the importance of profiles or silhouettes in design:

The secret of designing cartoon characters — and I’m giving away this secret now to all of you out there — is: you make a character that you can tell who it is in silhouette. I learned this from watching Mickey Mouse as a kid. You can tell Mickey Mouse from a mile away…those two big ears. Same thing with Popeye, same thing with Batman. And so, if you look at the Simpsons, they’re all identifiable in silhouette. Bart with the picket fence hair, Marge with the beehive, and Homer with the two little hairs, and all the rest. So…I think about hair quite a lot.

Of course, everything has a shape, but I think it is common to overlook the effectiveness of profile. Too often, I think, we focus on the content rather than the container and profile simply is simply what emerges. What Groening is saying, I believe, is not necessarily to do the opposite, but that a strong design works even when it is reduced to a mere outline.

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Noah Brier's BrandTags has been something of a runaway success. Since May 9, almost everyone, from Seth Godin to Jason Kottke, has written something about it.

BrandTags is "a collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you..." It is basically a way to gauge public perception of brands, which is a pretty neat idea, and provides some really interesting information (proving once again the incredible power of tagging) about the public perception of brands.

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