I was with my friend, on line at a local submarine sandwich shop, watching the man behind the counter make sandwiches. He was a samurai. His moves were methodical and precise. Mustard on the bun. Salami slices. Onions and peppers evenly spaced and flattened. Toaster oven. Next sandwich. He was a one-man assembly line.

We were behind a guy in his 20’s who ordered an Italiano, the sub we were going to get. The friendly sandwich samurai happily assembled the sandwich and when he was done, folded it tightly, cut it in half, then wrapped it. When it was our turn, we ordered the one big sub for two, and the sandwich artist did the exact same process to build our identical sandwich. However, this time, he folded it, wrapped it in paper, and then cut it in half.

Years of working in tech, and the best UX I’ve seen is in the simple and seemingly unimportant gesture of cutting after wrapping a sandwich, so that two people could easily split it, and cutting it before wrapping for one, no questions asked, all brilliant use cases seamlessly accounted for.

This is what UX means. It is the attention to customer needs, even if those needs go against normal conventions. It is the meeting of those needs with the best possible assumption, and making their day just a little bit easier. It’s providing the same great product but adding that extra detail that makes the product worth buying again.

Thanks for your attention to our customer experience. We’ll be back.