Client
quip
Category
Oral care, brush and refill system
Year
2024
Scope
Industrial design, product strategy, form development, CMF
Channel
Retail & DTC
Constraint
The Ultra had to read as a step up from the original quip brush without abandoning the language that made quip recognizable. More capability, a higher price, and still the same object family.
The category made that harder than it sounds. Electric toothbrushes compete by adding named modes, and by then most of the shelf offered five of them. They also share a construction: a neck that separates so the head can come off, which means a seam across the most visible part of the object and a place for water and paste to collect.
Decision
The old refill was a long-necked head, most of which was structure rather than bristle. The new puck reduces the disposable part to the bristles alone and cuts discarded material by roughly 70%. It also removed the seam. Rather than a breaking neck, the Ultra's body stays whole from top to bottom, which meant everything else had to route around that commitment. Components load from underneath, and a metal band closes the base and runs up the sides, so the parting lines sit where a hand doesn't go and the surface a person sees and cleans is uninterrupted.
Changing how a brush head attaches asks people to trust something unfamiliar, so the refill needed to feel definite rather than merely done. Insert, twist ninety degrees, push down until it clicks. Two confirmations, one tactile and one audible, because a single one leaves you wondering.
The modes went too. Five named settings, most of them meaningless, replaced by ten power levels. A number a person chooses is more useful than a word a marketing team picked.
Finish
Seamless silicone body with slight translucency, so the light bar reads through the surface and can be touched and adjusted directly. LED touch bar. Molded EasyClick pod. Metal band at the base and sides, cold to the touch, which is the premium signal the rest of the object deliberately avoids stating. Five colors.
Recognition
TIME Best Inventions 2025, Design category
Designed At
quip
More work
