Lubricate Your Shredder!
November 26th, 2008 by Geoff 6 Comments
In some ways this post is a public service announcement. It turns out you need to lubricate your cross-cut shredder every time you empty the bin. If you are not doing that, you should start now. You can get shredder oil or shredder lubricant sheets.
In most other ways, though, this post is really about the value of design.
I always assumed a shredder needs no maintenance. You plug it in, turn it on and it is ready to go. However when our shredder stopped working, the customer service person at Fellows told me it is critical to lubricate a shredder. Critical.
Let’s take a look at how this critical information is communicated. Note the red arrow and gray box I added around the maintenance section in their manual:
The type that explains the importance of lubricating the shredder is in 8 point (or smaller) and not highlighted in any way. If I was designing this manual, I might make everything else in the manual 8 point and make that section much larger.
This is really the same issue that was tackled by Deborah Adler for her SVA thesis project. Her grandmother accidently took her grandfather’s medicine since most prescription bottles look the same. Traditional labels represent all information at mostly the same size. The medicine, dosage, doctor’s name, pharmacy name, and all other information is not differentiated in any way.
Her redesign places real emphasis on the drug name and dosage instructions. The critical information gets weighted more.
In the prescription bottle case, design is the difference between life and death. In the case I am describing, it is the difference between spending another $50 and filling up the landfill with a broken shredder. I certainly recognize the difference, but I can’t help but think that designing the shredder manual better would not have been that difficult.
Once again, design matters.
Oh, by the way, in case you want to know what the lubrication instructions say, I blew them up for you here:
