Dole Salads Usability

Dole Salad ScaleWhy am I writing about pre-packaged supermarket salad mixes? Because Dole is doing something profoundly simple yet highly effective. As part of their package redesign launched last year, Dole salads now include a "Taste" and "Texture" scale on the front of each bag. From Mild to Bold and Tender to Crunchy, consumers can now easily determine the characteristics of each variety of salad mix that Dole sells. Usability has been brought to bagged salad mix and the world is a better place for it.

Ok, that's a big statement but the fact remains that Dole got this one right. The best part of this idea is that the information is about as basic as you can get - two values between 1 and 5. That's it. It's not complicated, yet it conveys important information to the decision maker.
My other favorite part of this? The scale is relatively objective. You see these sorts of things with other products or services as "Good, Better, Best" or similar designations. Superlatives coming from the provider are highly subjective and can't always be taken at face value. By contrast, I doubt many people would argue that Romaine lettuce isn't crunchy.

Kudos to Dole for taking a simple usability concept ("Don't make me think") and applying to their product packaging in an effective, objective and genuinely useful way.