Some products have become synonyms with defining the ultimate user experience for a whole class of products. The iPod, iPhone, Google etc… defined how we interact with our digital music and the internet. I recently saw a video that opened my eyes to the amazing user experience that is part of an everyday item, the banana.

I’ve been eating banana’s for years and taking for grated the customer research and user centered design that must have gone into this fruit.

As the video points out it’s perfectly made to fit in the hand end eat easily with no mess of fuss. The colour coded identification system easily lets you know the perfect time to eat the banana and that non-slip grip is great for busy professionals on the go.

The video does seem to focus on the human interaction with the banana but forgets that the designers of the banana pulled off a seldom seen feat of design making the banana not just human centered design but truly a cross species product as seen in the user test below. Watching the monkey enjoy his banana bridges the species gap and the designers of this product have made an amazing social statement of our common lineage and an evolutionary link by creating a product that both we and our distant cousins can enjoy equally. So next time you snap the open tab of a banana take a moment to think about the amazing product that has been created.