The Design of the Bottle

This type of hotel shampoo bottle has got to be one of the worst-designed packages in the world:


Imagine you want to take a shower. You get in the shower and just when you're ready to wash your hair, you remember you have to open the shampoo, which has a screw-off top.

Even if you manage to open it with your slippery hands and also succeed in not dropping the top, you're now faced with getting the shampoo out of the bottle and into one hand so you can use it.

This wouldn't be so bad if you didn't also have to put the top back on the bottle with just one wet hand, the other hand being full of shampoo. (In fact, if the bottle had a flat bottom, you could have opened it ahead of time, while your hands were dry. What a plan.)


If you don't put the top back on, your only choice is to leave the bottle lying on its side, because the bottom isn't flat. In this arrangement, the shampoo slowly oozes out.

How hard would it be for the makers to use a bottle with either a snap-open top (preferred) or a flat bottom? Not hard at all. The designer would just have to try using product once in a realistic setting and s/he would figure it out.