Client
method
Category
Home cleaning and personal care, reusable packaging system
Year
2022
Scope
Industrial design, product strategy, form development, CMF
Channel
Retail & DTC
Constraint
method was shipping water. Most of what travels on a truck inside a bottle of cleaner is water that was already waiting at the other end.
Stopping meant two open questions at once. What form the concentrate takes, whether powder, liquid or tablets. And what a bottle meant to survive ten years of use should be made of, given it still has to be recyclable at the end of them.
Decision
Powder, liquid and tablet each produce a different object, a different dose and a different thing to do at the kitchen sink. That choice governs everything downstream of it, and research settled it: liquid was the preferred format.
Everything after that follows from the pour. The durable bottle had to work with a small refill bottle emptied into it, and with the mixing that happens at the start of every cycle in a person's home.
Aluminum is what makes a bottle last ten years, and aluminum cannot be seen into. So a fill line went on the outside, where a person can eyeball it. Where that line sits relative to total volume is lower than on a typical bottle, because filling errors are not a risk to design against but a certainty to leave room for.
The last of it is behavior. method customers already refill, so the habit was there, but it was built around a large refill package. This replaces that with a tiny bottle that pours in and adds one step: fill with water. Keeping the new routine continuous with the one people already had is what makes a format change ask less of them than it looks like it should.
Finish
Reusable aluminum bottle with an external fill line, molded trigger or foaming pump, small recyclable glass concentrate bottles.
More work
