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Butter & Bloom · Writing
Why words beat clever icons
Five testers, three moments of hesitation and the plant icon two of them misread.
Pooja Dodia
·
2 Oct 2025
·
5 min read
Method
A five-person usability test of a low-fidelity prototype, after short surveys and informal interviews with bakery customers.
01
The test
Butter & Bloom is a concept ordering app for a neighbourhood bakery. I asked five participants to browse a category, favourite an item, buy something and switch on a dietary filter, then talk me through how each task felt.
Overall they found the app easy to use. Three places made them pause, and all three were about words.
Participants
5
Low-fidelity prototype
Moments of hesitation
3
Each one became a change
02
Three pauses
✕
A plant icon isn’t a label
Two people read the plant as “contains nuts” or “organic”. For anyone with a restriction, that guess is the whole problem.
✕
“Categories” made people pause
Nobody tapped it. First-time users couldn’t tell what was inside.
✕
The cart was in the wrong place
People open the cart far more than notifications, but notifications had the familiar top-right spot.
“If you can’t trust the label, you don’t buy the cake.”
03
What changed
✓
A written VEGAN tag on every card
And the filter switch renamed Vegan Mode.
✓
Sections renamed Shop
Home now says “Shop by cravings”.
✓
Cart moved top right
Notifications joined the floating nav.
The biggest wins came from plain language, not new features. Every icon now carries a text label, so nothing relies on recognising a symbol.
04
What I’d do differently
Next time I’d test labels before polishing the visuals, and check contrast while choosing the palette rather than after. I’d also recruit people with coeliac disease or nut allergies, not just preferences, and test Vegan Mode with them.
The full case study
Butter & Bloom: making dietary needs the easy part of ordering
Read the case study →
