Bake me some chocolate croissants!

It is a Sunday morning. This is the day I’m lucky enough to get a lay in! My son comes into our room at 8am to see if we are up. I roll out of bed half asleep and wonder what treat I will make for the boy’s for their Sunday breakfast. In the fridge I see a box of Jus-rol pains au chocolat to make. That will do.

I open up the cardboard packaging and out pops the container. I have done this many times before and do not even think about reading the preparation instructions. I tug at the corner of the label and attempt to pull it down. It doesn’t quite rip the way it should have done.

For the next 10 minutes I then start to dig my fingernails into the paper and rip bit by bit off. Until I realize that I should have been ripping the paper on the left hand side. Once I rip this I am then able to see the seam where I can twist the tube, so the croissant dough pops out. Finally! What a struggle on a Sunday morning. Next time perhaps I will buy the ones ready made instead.

I then tear the croissant dough into the 6 pieces. Place two chocolate sticks at each end of the dough and roll both ends in. Then put them in the oven and seal down to bake.

You are probably wondering why I am telling such a story in the first place?

Sometimes users do not read the instructions properly. Either a first time user or someone that has been using the product for ages. This is why it is important to make a product easy to use without having to go to a separate place to read a user guide. The problem with jus-rol is that yes the instructions are on the cardboard packaging that the jus-rol tube is in, however, on the tube itself it hides the instructions on the packaging under some white paper that you have to rip to see. It would be much better for these instructions to be visible, rather than hidden. I see this mistake happen in products all the time. Where users have to dig into user documentation or call support up to find out what they should be doing.

Users do things that you may not have thought of. One example is my example, where I’m half asleep and quickly (or not too quickly in my case) perform the task for the day and then move on. Did anyone think about a scenario where the white paper was not pulled off in the correct way, so the instructions underneath are not seen? A part of me feels silly for not doing it right in the first place. However, you may have read that I had a thought of purchasing ready made croissants instead. Jus rol loses out here. They have lost a customer due to their poor user friendly packaging.