My little brother’s name is Igor. Unlike other twenty-one year olds he barely eats any fruit or vegetable. He’s been like that since his third year. He only eats apples, bananas, potatoes and corn. And that’s it.
Some time ago I asked him to do me a favor by trying a tangerine, what he actually did. He was carefully chewing a piece, like it’s some sort of a living thing. After a few seconds he spitted out the semi transparent shell and asked me, puzzled: “What’s the point of eating this? The juice leaks out and then what? And why is the skin texture so weird?”
I was stunned. I didn’t know how to answer. His first question was resonating in my head. It’s understandable that someone who has just met the unknown object, will disassemble it and analyze the basic components separately, in this case: skin, semi transparent shell piece, pulp and juice. His questions were real, so to get the right answers, I needed to think like him.
When I got into Igor’s state of mind, I wanted to perceive what other plant has the worst overall user experience. Like someone who grew up on the countryside, watermelon was my first thought.
Through the analogy of observation, approach and interaction with the watermelon I recognized the following flaws and advantages.
Flaws:
- Watermelon is a seasonal fruit, marking summer. This is bad because you can’t eat it during the whole year.
- It’s complicated for carrying around because of its weight, shape and smooth skin, especially if you are a woman or a child. It can be bought by piece, but that is a bad idea.
- Its crust is fragile and it breaks easily.
- It grows on the ground, that’s why it is often muddy.
- It’s hard to determine its quality by simple observation.
- It is better to eat it cold and in that case it needs to lay down some time in a well, bathtub or fridge.
- The usage is not intuitive and you usually need a knife, and a big one, which is again bad if you are a child.
- Because of its watery structure, it drips a lot when sliced to pieces.
- The seeds are everywhere. Their removal takes forever.
- It holds a lot of sugar and water. Diabetics shouldn’t eat it at all, and larger amount of it makes you go to toilet repeatedly.
Advantages:
- It tastes nice and refreshing.
From this simple list, we can see that “against and for” ratio is 10:1, but still we simply adore watermelons. It seems that to us — “normals” — the only thing that matters is taste. The experience of taste leaves everything else behind.
Of course, neither the watermelon or any other fruit should be analyzed like this. But the question sets itself, is Nature — the greatest designer of us all — intended its products for all of us, just some of us or none of us. Maybe watermelons are made for bears or wild boars.
