If a dog smiles at you, it’s a bad sign. In the animal kingdom, retracting the lips and exposing the teeth signals aggression, dominance, and even imminent attack. The dog above isn’t smiling for the camera - he’s defending his bone. 

Why is it so different in humans, where a smile conveys happiness, amusement, and appeasement? This was an unsolved puzzle for hundreds of years, until in 1980, Professor John Ohala in the Department of Linguistics at Berkeley found that what’s actually important is how smiling makes our voices sound. Smiling pulls your cheeks back, reducing the size of your mouth cavity and producing higher vocal tract resonances. This mimics infantile vocalizations that originate from smaller vocal tracts and raises the pitch of your voice.

This is seen in other parts of nature, where low pitched sounds are more threatening and dominant and high pitched ones are submissive. A large dog’s growl is a deep and threatening vibration, while a small dog with a high pitch isn’t a threat at all. If you’ve ever been in a serious argument, you may have consciously deepened your voice to appear larger, more dominant, and intimidating.

So smiles aren’t just pleasing visually - they are vital to relationships with others and shaping positive emotions. They change the sound of your voice for the better: Smile and talk next time you’re on the phone, and the person on the other end will feel your voice lighten. It’s great for customer service too!

(Image source: David Shankbone)

I was at Fraiche Yogurt in Palo Alto earlier. It’s a lovely fresh and frozen yogurt shop in Palo Alto, actually started by 2 Wharton MBAs - not the traditional MBA type of business! I had their “natural” - organic frozen yogurt with strawberries and granola. The place was packed - the whole experience made me start to ponder why Fraiche is so successful, compared to other local shops and other yogurt shops in the area.

One immediate thing is the design of the store - there’s a lot of white. White yogurt, white storefront, white walls, white tables (if I remember correctly) … everything looks very clean and wholesome. My yogurt came in a cylindrical paper container, like the type you see by the soup at cafeterias everywhere, except Fraiche’s containers had a clean white design with their logo and philosophies. A quick glance at the underside of the container, however, reveals that it’s an 8 oz. paper cup from the Solo Cup Company, of beer-pong-16-ounce-Solo-cup fame and probably one of the biggest cup manufacturers.

The counter was very well-designed as well… the toppings were all on open display, behind a pane of glass, and you could see everything that the employees were doing. All the ingredients looked very fresh and a sign proudly proclaimed that all Fraiche yogurt was made from scratch, in-house, with organic milk. The actual yogurt was terrific - overall, a very good user experience!

My point is that Fraiche is a great example of a design-centric business and shows how smoothening the whole experience makes your customers happy. Having a great product doesn’t hurt at all either. :)