The Great Sandwich Debate

Content and Design · Nov 29, 2022

Is a hot dog a sandwich? This question was posed to me and my TELUS Digital colleagues on Slack earlier this month and a vigorous debate ensued. Responses ranged from “A hot dog is many things, including a sandwich” to “Technically a hotdog is a salad”. The discussion then veered into formal definitions of sandwiches and, further yet, of bread. (We’re all just a bunch of word nerds over here and love a good debate over semantics). At the end of the day, a poll was launched and the results (see below) suggest a deep divide across our team, with a slight tendency towards a hot dog NOT being a sandwich. You’ll note, however, that not very many people were neutral on the subject.

This past September, the fine folks at dscout dove into the reasons why we can’t settle the great hot dog debate. Their reasoning echoes my response in the aforementioned Slack discussion and job interview - it depends. Oh yes, that dreaded non-answer that seems to be the answer to most questions in the human-centered design space. In January 1996, Bill Gates suggested that “content is king.” In other words, “unique, high-quality, interesting and relevant content contributes significantly to the success of companies on the Internet” (Source). While that is certainly true, how does an organization ensure that its content is “unique, high-quality, interesting and relevant” as well as findable and usable? I would argue that knowing your users’ and their contextual understanding of both your organization and your products and services is how that is ensured. So rather than placing content on the throne, let us consider that “CONTEXT is king”.

What we are looking at in the great hot dog debate is a question that arises repeatedly in taxonomy design. Taxonomies and controlled vocabularies are collections of labels used to classify and organize things into a meaningful structure within a given domain. Here we have a label - “sandwich” - which may or may not be used to classify a thing - “hot dog”. This label exists within an ecosystem of other labels that represent other food options. We are trying to find a single label that can be used to represent that item, along with other items that are similar but as both our internal poll and the greater global debate demonstrates, a single label can be challenging to create when everyone’s individual context is so unique.

So if context is king, how do we ensure that we have a rich understanding of our users and their context and that this understanding is shared across our team before we start writing content and designing interfaces? We start by getting to know our users, their motivations, their underlying beliefs and values, and their experiences. There are many different ways that we can do this, but I’ll highlight five research methods that are especially pertinent to taxonomy design.