The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2021
Degree rebuilds the deodorant pack for one-hand, low-grip and no-sight use
Unilever's Degree redesigned deodorant for people with disabilities — hook, magnetic cap, Braille label — and won Cannes' Innovation Grand Prix.
Unilever (Degree)
What it had to solve
Wunderman Thompson's inclusive-design team, whose own leader has paralyzed arms, set out to fix an everyday object that shut out a huge group of users.
How it works
Everyday packaging is built around an imagined able-bodied user, so people who cannot grip, twist or see are locked out of routine tasks. With one in four U.S. adults living with a disability, Unilever's Degree brand, Wunderman Thompson's inclusive-design team and design studio SOUR set out to remove that barrier for a product most people use daily: deodorant.
The redesign began in co-creation sessions with people from the disabled community, guided by occupational therapist Michael Tranquilli and by Wunderman Thompson's Christina Mallon, whose own arms are paralyzed. The sessions pinpointed the real friction points — grasping, opening and closing, applying, and telling one product from another — and those insights set the design brief.
SOUR 3D-modeled and printed rapid prototypes so users could react to real objects, not drawings. Three rounds of revisions led to a full pack redesign with a hook for one-handed hanging and application, a magnetic cap that snaps shut with audible confirmation, enhanced bottom grip, a larger roll-on applicator, and a Braille label. The complete redesign beat a cheaper hack that would have adapted the existing bottle.
Degree Inclusive launched in late April 2021 as the first deodorant designed for people with disabilities. Within weeks it had drawn praise from design, brand and mainstream press; LBBOnline counted more than 989,000 mentions. In June, Cannes Lions gave the Innovation Grand Prix to Unilever and Wunderman Thompson Buenos Aires for the work.
Why it lands
- It treated disabled people as the primary audience: features came from co-creation sessions, an occupational therapist and real prototypes, not an agency's guess.
- The physical design did the storytelling: a hook, magnetic cap and Braille label are self-evident proof of the promise, so the product needed no ad campaign to explain why it mattered.
- Every change answered a named friction — grip, twist, sight, confirmation — so the redesign was verifiable, and competitors could not copy it without doing the same community work.
- The outcome was independently judged: an Innovation Grand Prix at Cannes Lions and mainstream coverage far beyond the trade press showed the idea carried weight outside marketing.
What it did
Degree Inclusive launched as the first deodorant designed for people with disabilities, drew over 989,000 media mentions within weeks, and won the Innovation Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2021.
What you can take
Start from the users' real motions — grip, twist, sight, hearing. Co-created with the community, an inclusive redesign improves the product for everyone and gives the brand a story rivals cannot copy.
Since then
Degree Inclusive won the Innovation Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2021, awarded to Unilever and Wunderman Thompson Buenos Aires. The launch put inclusive design on the mainstream beauty agenda — Wired, Dazed and ELLE covered the pack — and LBBOnline counted more than 989,000 media mentions in the weeks after the reveal. Degree tested and refined the prototype with partner organizations ahead of a commercial rollout, and the work became a reference point for treating accessibility as a core design discipline rather than an add-on.
Sources
- Degree Develops the First Inclusive Deodorant for People With Vision and Upper Limb Disabilities
- Problem Solved: Behind the Creation of the First Deodorant Designed for People with Disabilities
- Mastercard's 'True Name,' Woojer's 'Sick Beats,' Among Cannes Grand Prix Winners
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