Usability Testing on Colgate Toothpaste

New Colgate toothpaste cap is difficult to open when your hands are wet. This is a clear usability problem.

I normally do usability testing on computer and internet applications, but usability testing can be even more important in everyday items, such as the new packaging for Colgate toothpaste. You gets an “Arghh” moment when a product does not work or is more difficult to use than it should be. Yesterday morning I was in the bathroom washing my hands. After a quick dry I reached for my toothpaste to brush my teeth. Lo and behold, with my slightly damp hands I could not open the new Colgate toothpaste top! My hand kept slipping on the shiny plastic polypropylene cap. Clearly this is not the intent of the designers of toothpaste container. Sure it looks very slick, but will certainly anger many people.

Polypropylene is a versatile and robust plastic, but it is slippery. Moulding the toothpaste top of smooth plastic, without any built-in ridges will make it difficult to grasp at the best of times. In my case I used slightly wet hands, which made opening even more difficult. Colgate should acknowledge that the usecase of a consumer opening their toothpaste with wet hands will be a pretty common situation.

This flip top design is difficult to open, and with wet hands, near impossible. Usability testing would have caught this error.

I am young and without disability, so any toothpaste container that I cannot easily open is an immediate fail. Consider the geriatric 70 year old consumer with a mild case of arthritis? Is he excluded from using this container design?

Upon closer inspection, which I should not have to do in order to use such a simple product such as toothpaste, the lid is empossed with the text “FLIP UP OR TWIST OFF”. The text is in capital letters in 15pt, a good start. Unfortunately, most consumers don’t read the fine print on their toothpaste. As well, the embossed white on white type has almost no colour contrast, making it difficult to notice, much less read. Certainly I did not notice it. Lastly the all uppercase text makes it more time consuming and difficult to read. Most people can read faster by recognizing the profile of upper and lowercase text. This is the reason that most street signs are in mixed case. Thank goodness Colgate does not design our street signs.

There is a “DUAL USE CAP FLIP UP OR TWIST OFF” on the body of the toothpaste near the cap. It is black text on a white background, for the best colour contrast possible. Great. Unfortunately it is in 7 font, so small I again did not notice it. As well, depending on how the lid was screwed onto the body, your thumb or part of your grasping hand will cover this text, or the text will be on the opposite side to the consumer’s eyes, obscuring its usefulness. Again, using uppercase only reduces the ability to read it.

When I see a cap that flips to open, that is what I try to do. Flip caps are common in many products, such as shampoo, toothpaste, ketchup and mustard. Consumers are very used to this industrial design, and I happen to like its simplicity. The knowledge mapping of the flip top design for the common consumer is well known and accepted. Once you show the consumer that your cap is flip top, please make it as easy to use as all the other flip tops that are used on other products. Consumers will get very upset when their expectation of ease of use of the flip top is called into question, or the expected result of their attempt to open it fails and they cannot open the product.

After careful study, if you hold the toothpaste container in your right hand with your forearm parallel to the toothpaste case, and put your left hand parallel with the toothpaste tube and left thumb on the recessed area of the cap, with your left index finger close to the hinge of the toothpaste cap on the back of the cap, and press, it will open easier. With all the toothpaste I have consumed in 4 different countries on two continents, I have never before had any issues opening my toothpaste nor have I so closely studied my method of opening as carefully as I needed to for the new Colgate design. Ridiculous is an understatement.

It is clear that a usability test was not done on this flip cap design, or the results of this usability testing were ignored. Slick industrial design is nice, but please, function should take precedence over form. Toothpaste should not be this complex. Toothpaste containers should be simple to use.

Addendum: So it is confirmed that every single person in my family has complained about the Colgate toothpaste that I bought. I’m unsure what to do next. Do I teach them how to open the toothpaste flip cap, tell them to twist the cap off, or return the unopened toothpaste boxes?