I went to a nice cafeteria-style restaurant yesterday to get some lunch. I’ve been to this particular place before, but never ordered a sandwich there. That’s when I noticed something odd: The menu board only shows the names of their sandwiches, which aren’t very descriptive. Basically, there’s no way to figure out what’s in there without waiting in line to ask someone or finding a takeout menu.

Now, I’ve got nothing against a catchy, unique product name, whether it’s for a sandwich, a piece of software, or a coffeemaker. But if your business model requires customers to figure out what that name stands for in a crowded ordering area, you need to give them a few attributes they can understand. Otherwise, some portion of the people are going to get ticked off and head elsewhere.

In fact, I abandoned this very restaurant the week before and went someplace else down the block, precisely because I couldn’t figure out what I needed to order. It wasn’t until I found the secret decoder ring (in the form of their take out menu) that I could deciper the puzzle and choose the right sandwich.

Ever notice those raised areas for “Diet”, “Decaf”, and other choices on a soft drink or coffee lid, or the places to check off the ingredients on a pizza box or burrito wrapper? Have you ever seen them marked with anything useful? It’s pretty amazing to me that despite seemingly zero value to staff and customers, these little widgets continue to appear on food containers. I guess no one ever complained about them, but you have to wonder if the space might be put to better use.

Websites and web applications can have this problem too. Old features and buttons have a way of sticking around too long. So the next time you’re updating your user interface, take a look at the historical usage logs. Remove the buttons that nobody seems to use, or move them to a less-prominent location. Then, you can allocate this real estate to more productive uses, like making the most important buttons even more obvious to new customers.

Last weekend, I went to buy some shirts at a fairly popular clothing store. When it was time to pay for my purchases, I went towards the cash registers. The checkout area was split into three rows, facing two different directions. Since every register had the same green light, I had no idea which ones were open. So, I figured I’d stand and wait for the next available cashier to signal for me.

But then I noticed the problem: there was no sign or floor decal showing where to stand or where the line forms. People seemed to be buying things and processing returns at all sorts of locations, without any obvious pattern. So I took a guess and went to the right, and others lined up behind me. Despite our growing queue, some people ignored us and just walked to distant registers. We finally gave up and moved back to what was apparently the “official” waiting area, perhaps christened as such by people who shop there more often.

This should be pretty obvious, but if you ask customers to form a line, always tell them where the line starts and what it’s for. Something as simple as “Checkout line forms here” or “Wait here for next cashier” can save a lot of hassle for customers, reduce conflicts during high-traffic periods, and make your staff more efficient. In the online world, this means making sure that the button to check out or complete a transaction is clearly marked. And since customers can’t see what happens behind the scenes (after all, there’s no cashier scanning and bagging their items), including a progress bar with an estimate of how long it will take to submit their order is a smart practice, too.

In a brief glance at the items that I take along for an overnight trip, no fewer than 4 of them have sharp edges. Not just sort of sharp, but sharp enough to cut your hand or tear your travel bag if you put them in the wrong place. Some of these tubes and containers could even poke a hole in the others if you positioned them the right way.

I know there are manufacturing constraints that lead to this sort of design. But that doesn’t mean that the designers should ignore the problem. Rounding off the edges or using a softer material would be a big improvement.

I don’t think this problem is limited to packaged goods. It happens with software, too. When you install a program that makes another one stop working, or you have to take special precautions to avoid making errors on a website, you’re basically dealing with another form of sharp edges. If the products you sell are like this, perhaps it’s time to smooth out these problems for your users — and stop tearing holes in their workflow.