Philips One, known internally as “Daytona”, was the first product at Philips Oral Health Care to work with an OEM supplier for the full development of the electric toothbrush.
The Philips One toothbrush design was done internally and provided to the development vendor. Unlike other Sonicare products where Philips Oral Health Care Bothell Washington executed the development and project management, Philips One’s project management team was Philips Singapore.
My Role
I was the lead industrial designer on this project leading the team with an external design agency (Play & Co.) and communication designers, CMF designers, and other project team members outside the design team.
What is Philips ONE?
Philips One is a battery-powered power toothbrush that uses a new, different brush head that is not compatible with the existing Philips Sonicare products. As we saw more low-cost battery-powered toothbrushes entering the market, Philips saw the need to introduce a battery-powered toothbrush to protect our market share.
PHILIPS One
Challenge
With many new battery-powered toothbrushes introduced in the market by the competitors, the biggest challenge was to create a unique and distinguishable design. Design that will stand out from the many affordable battery-powered toothbrushes and, in the long term, an own-able design that we can use to build our design identity.
Another long-existing challenge for Philips Sonicare toothbrushes was converting manual toothbrush users to a power toothbrush.
Solution
Our benchmark was a manual toothbrush in Designing the Philips One, not a competitor’s power toothbrush products. The design was made as slim as possible to make the brushing experience similar to a manual toothbrush.
Philips One’s design has a rounded base, an unusual design for a power toothbrush. Rechargeable toothbrushes typically stand upright on the bathroom countertop. A round base is better for ergonomics.
Philips One comes with an AAA size battery preloaded, which will last for around three months. Philips One does not require any settings. It is simple to remove your manual toothbrush and replace it with Philips One using the cup or the toothbrush holder the user already had in the bathroom.
Designing the product unique was a big challenge, as many battery-powered toothbrushes were already in the market.
Visually, we designed the handle with a swirl pattern that runs along the brush handle side.
Another solution is to provide a beautiful travel case with more of a “side-kick” to the toothbrush rather than a travel case that focuses only on functionality.
Lastly, we provided multiple colours targeted primarily at Gen-Z shoppers. Philips One has brush head colours that match the handle colour, which is quite unusual. Typical Sonicare products are offered only with two brush head colours due to inventory management’s difficulty.
