Unilever National Project

Increasing use of refill formats for personal care products

We collaborated with Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, to address how Unilever can increase consumer use of refill formats for personal care products. We first conducted multiple interviews and a large-scale survey with 240 participants regarding their opinion of and experience with sustainable personal care products. Key insights from this survey included discovering the following: (1) that customers care most about affordable price (85.8%), product purpose and effectiveness (71.1%), and familiar brand (59.9%) when purchasing personal care products, (2) that customers are most likely to refrain from using a refillable product if they cannot find it at the places they shop (65.9%), they feel that it takes too much work or time (40.5%), or they have already settled on a favorite product that does not have a refill option (31%). After ideating, reframing, immersing, prototyping, and testing our ideas, we were able to create our final product: a Caddy and Sustainable Shower Set (CASSS), which was created in order to reduce plastic use and be customizable and accessible. We also outlined the user journey for Yale undergraduate students, who were our primary focus during the design challenge. Finally, we presented our findings at the Unilever Spring 2021 National Project Expo.