Hidden, without hiding

A key part of design (interface or otherwise) is getting the user to notice something. The need to keep the design clean and uncluttered is contradicted by the user’s desire to not have to hunt for things, or worse, make an irreversible error.

I recently purchased a book shelf from CB2 and had it shipped to my apartment. It was packed pretty efficiently; the shelves overlapped/interlocked and were padded by these cardboard and styrofoam inserts:

I had been tossing these aside (in the trash pile), until I got to this insert:

A mysterious red ribbon was taped to the bottom of the box itself, and the other end was taped to the bottom of the insert. It essentially acted as a breadcrumb, or giant red arrow, pointing to this:

There is a high probability I would have thrown the hardware away (or had a frustrating time rummaging through the trash shrapnel) had this red ribbon been absent. It seems kind of crude and inelegant, but it served its purpose flawlessly, and was implemented without changing the arrangement of the packaging materials, or adding significant overhead.