Top of the muffin to you!

How a Seinfeld bakery serves as a cautionary tale for experience design

In the late nineties, an insight came to light: people only wanted muffin tops.

Elaine tells Mr. Lippmann, “It’s where the muffin breaks free of the pan and sort of does its own thing.”

So a business set out to meet this need — and million-dollar idea — by popping the tops off of the muffins to sell.

“Pop the top, toss the stump.” Elaine explains.

They did it this way, because that’s how they were used to making the muffins: same recipes, same muffin pans, and same processes.

As a result, the business accumulated a massive amount of stumps that nobody wanted, even for free.

“Keep your damn stumps!” says Rebecca De Mornay from the homeless shelter.

This situation forced the business to spend extra money and time on resources to clean up all the stumps.

Newman, “The Cleaner,” fixes the stump situation with cartons of milk.

In the words of Newman, “If I’m curt, then I apologize.”

But this is what happens if you don’t start with a strategy — and a content strategy when designing experiences.

Let me explain what I mean with this handy glossary.

In this tale, muffin tops represent the content that people need, pans are the structure, recipes are the guidelines, processes are the governance, and Newman and milk are the cleaners — the resources that fix the problem, which is what content design so often does in a broken system.

Let’s do it right from the beginning. So we can not only optimize impact for the people we design for and the businesses we create opportunities for, but also make the best muffin tops on the planet!

The best muffin tops on the planet!

Learn more about content design and the value it brings by reading The World of Content Design According to Me.