Eating spoon-worthy foods is annoying with a spork. Eating fork-worthy foods is annoying with a spork. Eating much of anything is a worse experience with a spork. In this post I am going to explain from a designer's perspective why sporks fail in their usage as well as why the failure of the spork can move us forward as a society
Let's first look at the designer's perspective. Designers use a couple criteria to evaluate interaction with a device. The first are known as affordances.
Affordances are the relationship between what an object can do and the capability of the user to determine what the object can be used for. For example, when seeing a handle on a regular door, we can glean that there is a high possibility that if we pull on it, it may open the door. Even if you have never used a door, the handle is the only maneuverable feature of the device and it could be figured out fairly quickly. Another example is a shoe. Even if you had never used a shoe before, you could glean from the shape of it and the logical parts of your body where it may fit where it should go.
The second term is a signifier. A signifier is a physical location that communicates where an action should take place. For example, a button on an elevator is a signifier for movement of the elevator to the specified floor.
Now, we can apply these concepts to the spork. We see clues on a spork that signify how we should use it. There is a handle and a rounded section with tines at the end of it. We are accustomed to handles from other utensils such as forks, spoons, and knives. The handle is a signifier for the way the utensil should be grasped. We can also see some perceived affordances at the tip of the utensil. We can see sharp points we can assume would work to stab and hold something with as well as a rounded bowl that could be used to scoop. As stated in The Design of Everyday Items, "when technology behaves in an uninterpretable fashion we can become confused, frustrated, and even angry". We are used to the mighty spoon with its voluminous caverns capable of ingesting fathoms of soup and the regal fork with its dagger-like tines able to stab through the gameyest of meats. These devices have ingrained in us a certain quantity of food that can be delivered to our mouths in each bite.
The spork rewrites all the rules ingrained in us from other cutlery. Less food can be consumed across the board leading to frustration and anger. The perceived affordances are not working as we thought they would. This frustration is also increased when a user is especially hungry. When hungry, many people are also angry leading to the common phrase of one being "hangry". The cure for this hunger will be administered at a slower rate than with other utensils if a spork is used. I am going to propose an entirely anecdotal mathematical equation for describing the relationship between time, anger, and hunger. I call this the Sanjay Time-Anger Framework:
Note that time is squared. This is important because this means that anger will increase exponentially as time increases. Thus, the longer a time that it takes to eat, the more anger will increase as each unit of time progresses.
This equation really is the nail in the coffin for the spork. Not only is it a poor design in terms of how the user interacts with it, but because the specific scenario it is used in (curing hunger) takes more time compared to other utensils, anger levels end up higher. It is not surprising that many hate the utensil.
Let's take a moment to understand hate itself. Evolutionarily, humans are tribal. We create groups based on a shared identity such as religion, ideology, or nationality. In order to survive, our tribe has to outcompete all the other tribes. The prehistoric world was a brutal place filled with inter-tribe strife as well as environmental hardships. Hate is a powerful tool to protect oneself and tribe. From a game theory perspective, it is safer for you to hate than try to understand a rival tribe. If you both approach with understanding, both tribes will be more prosperous. If you approach them with understanding and they approach with hate, they may kill you. This outcome is not acceptable. Thus, the safest option for both tribes is to approach the other with hate. This is a sub-optimal equilibrium, but the safest one for the tribe. In game theory, this is known as the prisoner's dilemma. If you want to learn more about it check out this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma.
Modern humans are just a stone's throw away, evolutionarily, from our prehistoric counterparts. Even though there is no rival tribe to contend with, we still hate things. We hate other people, places, and things often for irrational reasons. Genocides have been committed just because one group of people hates another.
It is not destined that we all feel hatred. It is possible to peel off this vestigial skin of a bygone era and learn how to not hate. Shedding our internal biases are hard and take time. I want to solve this problem faster. The spork is key to this.
I see the spork as being a worthy vessel with which to fill with anger. I put the spork alongside trucks lifted too high, mixing black and khaki, in-app purchases, windows updates, and smart fridges. None of these things are that terrible, but are easy to despise. If you ever need a psychological punching bag to relieve your anger just picture trying to eat soup or pasta with a spork. There are many worse, irrational things to hate in this world. To the spork, oh I love how I hate you.
Sources
I'm too lazy for a citation page. Here are the books and websites I read in the making of this: