A nice cup of tea. Piece of cake.

A warm sausage roll and tea followed by a french fancy. A nice way to spend an afternoon. But where you have it is important, correct? You would probably prefer to be in a nice little coffee shop on a nice quiet street, having a nice relaxing chat. Where else better then than Greggs?! Probably the most popular bakers in Britain, in Dundee alone there are seven or move Greggs shops. But which one would you go to? Does it matter? I would have thought not o me, but yesterday as I was downtown I realized I'm a little more shallow that I thought. The indoor market in Dundee is a dark, dingy, shady looking place where there are a variety of fleece shops, wool shops and I suppose you could say flower shops. And a Greggs. Infact maybe the biggest Greggs in Dundee, having a large cafe area too. We had been planning to grab a roll on the way back to University but as we walked past me and my friend looked at each other with a kind of 'Hmm I'm not very hungry' anymore look before walking straight to the Overgate Shopping Centre's Greggs and filling our grumbling stomachs there. 

This poses the question, again, why? Similarly to what Gladwell talks about in The Tipping Point, where he writes about how environment affects behaviour and how we react to how we treat our environment. Like the story of how........ shot dead four men on the New York Subway because they looked dodgy and how it has been argued that environmental factors (amongst others) triggered him to do this. Factors like grafitti, litter and noise etc all contribute to environment and how we react to it. As a designer I am realising how important this is to the design process. In my subconscious mind I must have decided in a split second I didn't want that particular Gregg's despite the fact the food is from the same factor, probably the same lorry, and the same waitress serving me it. The only difference was the setting - in the indoor market it is grey, quiet and for some reason eerie unlike the busy, bright shop in another shopping mall. I had blown off the exact same product all because of the design of the location and environment. If all Gregg's were in indoor markets and similar environments, would the tasty lunchtime fix still 'Stick' like it does? 

Obviously a nice cup of tea isn't a piece of cake.