At lunch me and my coworkers often entertain ourselves by reading through various magazines. This week, Real Simple Magazine is sitting in the lunch room.
At the end of the magazine they had a perforated, detachable cheat sheet that summarized some of the content of the magazine. The sheet itself was perforated so you could separate it into even small, wallet sized sections. One section had a recipe, one had information about a bottle of wine spotlighted in the magazine, one had information about makeup, etc.
I was astounded at this.
This simple, detacheable card was the most useful part of the magazine. This card allows anyone to take the information with them, and easily try out or implement the information in the magazine.
Brilliant design.
This got me to think about how, with design, you make something more useable and useful. I have a few things I want to implement along these lines, such as popout articles, instructions, references and the like. There is a lot more, but I think the overall key to this is to think about how the end user of your product, site, or thingy will actually use what you are providing them.
Tags: Useability