How Not to Improve Your Product Design

Toothpaste instructions are fairly simple:

“For best results, squeeze tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up.”

For years, this worked fine—it made sense, I got it, I could follow it (although TedVanWhy can’t figure out why on earth you need to be told how to squeeze toothpaste in the first place). But what happens when you change your design, but not your instructions?

Now how do you flatten as you go up? And how will doing it produce “best results”? This caused my eight-year-old some mild grief the other night and he’s still waiting for a satisfying answer. I’m still wondering why no one at these toothpaste companies is sufficiently embarrassed by their product to change their labels.

When you improve the design of your product, don’t forget to improve your materials. Otherwise your business looks sloppy and dim-witted, and your customer just gets frustrated.

And that doesn’t sound like much of an improvement at all.

Photo credit: Petter Duvander