The Lightbulb

A long time ago, my wife accidentally broke this exposed lightbulb for the nightlight in our 7 year old daughter E’s room. We haven’t replaced it in such a long time, but one afternoon a few weeks ago I was hanging out in E’s room with her. She needed to clean the dresser where this nightlight was. That was the moment to replace the lightbulb.

I could have went on my phone and just bought the lightbulb quickly. Instead, I took the opportunity to talk to E about how people actually complete the purchase and why things are designed the way that they are so things are easy to use.

E is really into design and very creative, so she liked talking about why the search box used a magnifying glass instead of writing the word ‘search’ out. I also talked about how there is usually a button that is easy to find so you can add things to your cart and checkout. If it was hard to find, she understood that people would buy less because it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. The button is also brightly colored or noticeable because that’s what they want you to click!

At the end of our chat, we bought the lightbulb. She had such a fun time chatting for a while about it. A week later, she even brought up that memory randomly and said she had such a good time chatting about the lightbulb purchase. It made me feel happy as a parent that I did that.

When the lightbulb came, I screwed it into the nightlight and sure enough, it was crazy bright…which is not what we wanted! My wife laughed because she is usually the one to buy these things. I ended up taking a second pass at it and finally got the right one. The two week saga ended up with the right lightbulb and E was super happy with it. All in a day’s…I mean two weeks’ work!