Breaking the mould: when chocolate design defeats self-control

I’ve love chocolate. Opening a large bar is a dangerous activity. One square leads to another and then another.

To prevent me devouring the whole bar (or, at least, far too much of it) plenty of willpower is called for.

Fortunately, my willpower gets a helping hand from the design of the bar.

No matter their size, chocolate bars are divided into one or more rows of equal-sized squares or rectangles.  Cadbury’s recent Dairy Milk campaign and limited-edition packaging even makes a feature of this.

This grid helps prevent me over-gorging as the end of each row serves as a sensible stopping point.

If my willpower wobbles and I snaffle the first square of four from the next row, I’ve then got to keep going through the next three squares as well. Well, you’ve got to keep the bar neat and tidy, haven’t you?

Wrapping the bar up with a row part-eaten would feel weird, like I’m breaking some unspoken chocoholic law or transgressing long-standing confectionery etiquette.

If word got out, I’d probably be banned from entering Switzerland, Belgium and certain parts of Birmingham.

Anyway, the point is the end of the row is the obvious place to pause and put the remainder of the bar away.

In other words, the design of the bar does its best to bar me from going too far.

Until now…

Tony’s Chocolonely: delicious but devilish?

The Bible says the Devil wore a crucifix. I say he wears a brightly coloured wrapper emblazoned with the name Tony’s Chocolonely.

This relatively new brand on the chocolate block makes a big thing about the company’s ethical stance, and how it pays cocoa growers a fair wage.

And it’s not just their ethics that leave a better taste in your mouth… their chocolate is bloody fantastic!

It’s also bloody dangerous.

Tony’s Chocolonely bars have broken the time-honoured grid-based mould of the chocolaterati by instead employing a random crazy-paving effect where no two pieces are the same shape or size.

Tony’s explain this as being a confectionery representation of the inequality of the chocolate industry (I kid you not… read the inside of their wrappers).

An interesting concept – and inequality in the production chain is certainly a topic that needs to be addressed.

But even if highlighting this is the sole intention of the haphazard design, the effect on people like me with a bar of the good stuff in hand is that it makes it bloody difficult to stop eating it.

At the end of each row of squares on a standard bar, the chocolate seems to say, “Take a breath… are you sure you want more?”. But with Tony’s, you never get to the end of a row.

I can try to kid myself that if I just have one more oddly shaped chunk it will neaten up the bar and I’ll call it a day.

But then that chunk breaks off along with its adjacent chunk, making the bar look worse rather than better. “Oh, I’d best carry on a bit further then,” I think chucking a few more non-squares into my gob.

And far sooner than I hoped or is healthy, the bar is no more.

Farewell squares, farewell friction

Is this an accidental byproduct of the design or an insightful – and devious – intended consequence?

Either way, by removing the psychological friction that helps grind your greedy grazing to an end-of-the row halt, Tony’s may be selling more chocolate.

Tony’s feels like a company with good morals and strong values, so I suspect this is a happy accident. The design of the bar is simply about standing apart from the industry’s incumbents.

But if that’s not the case, I don’t approve.

Using an understanding of psychological frictions or cognitive biases against people’s best interests (such as making it more likely they will scoff a whole bar of chocolate in one sitting) goes against my grain.

As awareness of such behavioural science grows, consumers are becoming savvier about how design influences their choices. Companies that deliberately manipulate these psychological triggers risk more than just customer trust – they risk their entire brand reputation.