Fortune:

The tragic side of Tide Pods

Press

Tucker Fort speaks to design improvements Tide could make to its pods to improve safety and deter ingestion by children.

The design factors that have made laundry pods so successful—their compactness, easy accessibility, and aesthetically pleasing look—are also potentially fatal flaws. Too often, it appears, young children and seniors with dementia mistake them for candy and try to eat them. And when that happens, they’re more likely than other detergents and other household cleaning products to cause serious injury.

Pods have prompted an average of 11,568 poison-control calls a year involving young children since 2013, their first full year on the U.S. market.

Executive Director and Partner, Tucker Fort, speaks to Fortune about the product design improvements that P&G should consider as part of a design refresh in how pods’ smell, feel, and look in an effort to deter vulnerable populations, like children, from eating them.

Visit Fortune to learn more about the continuing Tide story, including how design could help.

Feb 2019