The Butt Brush Test
Posted by conall
A few thoughts about personal space
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The concept of personal space in India is much different than the USA. Crowds stand closer. People are more at ease with touching each other and this leads to different expectations in commercial environments.
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Shoppers sometimes want to be crowded in. Many shops have to provide direct access to the product, because their customers won’t be comfortable buying a product unless they can touch and hold it first and there is a crowd of other people doing the same. It may be important for our product to be touchable before it’s sold.
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So, what is the “butt brush test”? When designing shopping space or any shared public space (restaurants, lobbies, bookstores, grocery stores, etc) for a Western audience, the butt brush test is a quick evaluation tool used to check that two people could pass one another back-to-back in the aisles without bumping into each other. Thanks to the folks at Idiom here in Bangalore for introducing me to this concept.
How does the target market’s perception of personal space affect your product design? Marketing? Point-of-sale design?