The UX of Easter Eggs
A true user eggsperience 🥚
As we head toward the monumental occasion of Easter — a day celebrated globally with chicks, bunnies, milk and cocoa — the PlusNarrative team tasked me with dissecting the sacred rituals behind devouring our favourite Easter eggs (from a UX perspective of course).
For this design-oriented (highly scientific, mind you) examination of the Easter Eggsperience we’ll consider the 3 primary guises of Egg.
The First
This is the entry level Easter Egg. The Easter Egg of the people.
Chocolate on the outside, mallow on the inside, this roughly pill shaped disk presents itself in a wrapper that is tailored from the ground up to summon your inner child. The child that you’ve locked in the cupboard since last Easter, in favour of a quinoa and legume-based diet.
The Mallow Egg is well suited to its user, presenting a smooth, seamless and readily workable interface. Simply apply your fingertips to the zigzag top of the wrapper to produce a glistening chocolate ‘thing’.
This presents the user — thus far guided by instinct alone — with one of three journeys to choose. The first sees the user simultaneously devouring both the chocolate and marshmallow in a two-bite frenzy. This results in nothing but sweet foamy residue in the mouth and an empty wrapper in hand.
The second path in our Mallow Egg User Journey is taken by those who aren’t chocolate enthusiasts, but are Master of Mallows. They opt to fridge the Egg, resulting in a cracking coating of chocolate.
If time permits, this user can further immerse themselves in the experience by attempting to remove said coat, tile by cracked tile, leaving only the delicious marshmallow deposit now with tiny cold crystals of sugar enhancing the mouth feel.
Yolk-lovers this way! The final run (see what I did there?) through the Mallow Egg journey is the most decadent one. After peeling back the rather fetching wrapper this user looks to level-up their account — think in-app purchase if you will.
This Mallow Egg evolves via 5 seconds of microwave radiation exposure, forming an ooey-gooey mess of chocolatey indulgence and regret. Ensure you have time for a nap before using a spoon or two marie biscuits to seal your fate.
The Second
The second Easter egg to consider packs a combo of hard candy and velvety chocolate. An M&M on steroids then.
Such a beast presents two user experiences. The first leaves your face awash with white markings of an Uruk-hai. This Egg isn’t a complex design, mimicking that which nature has already made perfect. With no ground shaking features or UI eye candy (sorry), this design puts ‘engaging experience’ front and center.
Seeing that you’re gnawing and salivating on an egg, this immersive experience that presents an interactive, enjoyable interface to the user, but is in no way, shape or form graceful or classy.
The second and most graceful way of working through the Candy Egg interface is for only the most calm and collected of personas. It is only these folk who are equipped to tackle this egg by crafting a purpose built, candy based cup.
Once the user creates an aperture in the Candy Egg, they’re able to continually break and deposit chocolate shards into an ever filling chocolate-vessel. Once the user has experienced all that this candy crush has to offer, they eat the remains of the trusty vessel which is now a very tiny, very shallow chocolate bowl.
The Third
Much like the third day of Easter, the final Easter Egg presents a surprise. It’s not an egg at all. It’s a rabbit. A hare. A bunny. One so user friendly, he wears a bell on his collar. This Swiss rabbit (who shall henceforth be named Peter) has been developed laboriously by masters of the craft, having every bug, glitch and little inconsistency ironed out for a discerning user such as yourself.
The concept behind Peter was to design and develop the Bunny of bunnies. The yardstick with which all bunnies succeeding shall be measured with. Think this product presents childish Mickey Mouse mockery? No Sir. You stick to the Mallow Egg…filthy heathen. This user interface is as organic as they come, showcasing design elevation and realistic scale.
For the user who thrives on taking the bull by the horns, Peter’s fluid front end design boasts a CTA most difficult to resist. Magnificent ears serve as clickbait that direct the user to the dark world of chocoholism faster than they’d care to admit.
Those less interested in Peter’s design language and visual splendor will find themselves swiftly in a different rabbitat altogether— the backend. Caring less about the journey than the destination, AB testing results have revealed these users to be the same people who eat apple cores.
Although less ceremonious than starting with the ears, munching from the rabbit‘s tail proves just as satisfying. Much like a reading Chinese translated novel vs its original English counterpart.
Final Thoughts
Being no fan of marshmallow and having no interest in bunnies, I myself am a Candy Egg kind of guy. For me, the product ticks the box for textural juxtaposition and scores points by combining experiences of hard candy and smooth chocolate into one well rounded (ahem) user journey.
Furthermore, being designed as an actual egg (complete with the shell) offers a healthy helping of visual badassery, while bright white food colouring makes for a very good time. Some variants are even coupled with a pastel palette of edible dye for people to contribute and curate their own experiences via the Egg.
That being said, being able to connect these three different Eggs to personas means that successful product experiences are those that are geared toward a specific people. A preexisting group of people that share your viewpoint, passions and frustrations.
The checkboxes of success are specific to individual communities, created by catering to their needs and wants. Doing so develops a meaningful UX and in turn an impactful product.
If your intended project is too comprehensive to cater to a specific user, put the power in their hands by enabling a measure of customisation on the product. This affords customers a sense of entitlement, freedom and ownership both in the product and in your eggcelent brand 🥚.
Happy Easter everybody!
