What Medical Device Designers Can Learn From a Heinz Ketchup Bottle

If you’ve ever tried to get ketchup out of a classic glass Heinz bottle, you know the ritual.

Turn the bottle upside down.

Hold it at just the right angle.

Tap the neck.

Wait.

Tap again.

Pound the bottom of the bottle.

Give it a good shake.

Shake a little harder.

Regret shaking harder.

Clean ketchup off your plate, your hand, or possibly your shirt.

It’s funny because it’s familiar. It’s also a surprisingly useful design lesson.

The original glass ketchup bottle did one thing very well: it held ketchup. But holding the product was only part of the user experience. The real challenge was getting the ketchup out when, where, and how the user wanted it.

That’s where product design gets interesting.

Eventually, Heinz introduced easier-squeeze, inverted bottles with a valve that helped control flow and reduce mess. The product inside didn’t need to change much. The user experience did.

That’s a lesson medical device designers should pay close attention to. In medical technology, a product can contain brilliant engineering, elegant science, or powerful clinical value and still struggle if users can’t operate it safely, confidently, and efficiently.

The ketchup bottle may not be a medical device, but it’s a simple reminder of a serious point:

“Great design doesn’t stop at making a product work. It makes the product work for real people in real situations.” – Tom KraMer

Lesson 1: Invest in Design Before the Problem Gets Sticky

The old ketchup bottle wasn’t “broken” in the most basic sense. It held ketchup. It preserved ketchup. It looked iconic on a table.

But from a usability standpoint, it created friction whenever someone tried to use it.

Medical products can run into the same problem. A device may meet technical requirements and still create confusion, extra steps, unnecessary training burden, awkward handling, or avoidable use errors.

That’s why design can’t be treated as a final polish step. It has to be part of the product strategy from the beginning.

For medical device teams, investing in design early can help clarify:

Who the users are
What tasks they need to complete
Where mistakes are likely to happen
What the environment demands
How the product should communicate its use
What tradeoffs matter most to adoption, safety, and performance

A beautiful product that’s hard to use isn’t finished. It’s just decorated.

Lesson 2: Understand Affordance and Signifiers

A good squeeze bottle tells you what to do almost instantly. The flexible body suggests squeezing. The valve helps control the output. The cap location and label placement suggest the bottle should be stored upside down.

That’s the relationship between affordance and signifiers.

An affordance is what a design allows a user to do. A signifier is the cue that helps the user understand what action to take.

A button affords pressing. A textured grip affords holding. A tab affords pulling. A light, label, sound, color, or shape can signify what’s happening or what should happen next.

For medical designers, this is a big deal. Users often interact with medical devices under pressure, with distractions, fatigue, anxiety, gloves, limited visibility, or competing tasks. If the product doesn’t clearly communicate how it should be used, the burden shifts to training, memory, documentation, or trial and error.

That’s risky.

A device should help users understand:

Where to hold it
What to press
What step comes next
Whether it’s working
Whether something went wrong
How to recover from an error

Good affordances and signifiers reduce cognitive load. They make the product feel more intuitive. And most importantly, they help prevent the kinds of use errors that can affect safety and adoption.

We explore related product design lessons in our article on Why You Need to Design with Misuse in Mind.

Lesson 3: Design for Human Factors and Usability, Not Ideal Conditions

The ketchup bottle struggle usually happens in a low-stakes environment. Maybe dinner is delayed by 10 seconds. Maybe someone laughs. Maybe a fry goes tragically unsauced.

In medical device development, usability problems carry a lot more weight.

A clinician may need to complete a task quickly. A caregiver may be using the product at home with minimal training. A patient may be nervous, tired, or physically limited. A technician may need to set up the device repeatedly during a busy shift.

That’s why human factors and usability need to be designed into the product, not checked at the end.

Strong usability work asks questions like:

Can users complete the intended task without help?
Are the instructions clear enough?
Does the workflow fit the real environment?
Are critical controls visible and understandable?
Could the product be misused in a foreseeable way?
Does the design reduce risk or simply shift responsibility to the user?

The classic bottle created a sequence users had to learn: angle, tap, wait, shake, clean. The improved bottle reduced the need for that ritual.

That’s what good medical device design should do. It reduces unnecessary rituals, removes avoidable confusion, and supports safe use through the design itself.

Lesson 4: Bring Manufacturability Into the Conversation Early

The improved ketchup bottle wasn’t just a user experience challenge. It was also a manufacturing challenge.

A flexible bottle, inverted package, controlled dispensing valve, cap design, materials, filling process, shipping expectations, shelf stability, and cost all had to work together. The better design had to be usable, but it also had to be manufacturable at scale.

Medical products face the same tension, only with higher stakes.

Design teams need room to explore creative ideas. Engineering and manufacturing teams need to understand how those ideas can be produced reliably, consistently, and cost-effectively. If manufacturability enters too late, teams may discover that a promising concept is too expensive, fragile, complicated, or difficult to assemble.

That doesn’t mean innovation should be restricted from the start. It means practical constraints should be part of the design conversation early enough to guide smarter decisions.

This is especially important for teams moving toward tooling, supplier selection, tech transfer, and production support. A design that looks great in a prototype shop may behave very differently on a manufacturing floor.

If you want to learn more, here are nine activities you should provide as part of manufacturing production support.

Lesson 5: Know When to Pivot Without Losing the Core Idea

The squeeze bottle didn’t abandon ketchup. It didn’t try to turn ketchup into something else. It protected the core product while changing the delivery experience.

That’s a smart pivot.

In product development, teams sometimes treat pivoting like failure. But a good pivot can be the thing that saves the product. The key is knowing what should change and what should stay constant.

For medical device teams, a pivot might involve:

Changing the form factor
Simplifying a workflow
Redesigning an interface
Adjusting the use environment
Reconsidering the user group
Revising the manufacturing approach
Reframing the product’s value proposition

The danger is pivoting without understanding the implications. If the user changes, the research may need to change. If the workflow changes, the risk analysis may need to change. If the form changes, the usability and manufacturing assumptions may need to change.

Smart pivots are evidence-based. They protect the strongest parts of the idea while adapting the parts that are getting in the way.

That’s a major difference between simply reacting and designing with purpose.

Lesson 6: Find the “Wow” in a Real User Need

The improved ketchup bottle had a “wow” factor because it solved a familiar problem. It didn’t rely on novelty alone. It made the experience cleaner, easier, and more predictable.

That’s the kind of wow medical products need too.

The most meaningful competitive advantage often comes from deeply understanding one user need that others have ignored. It might be a faster setup. A clearer interface. A more comfortable grip. A better way to confirm status. A simpler cleaning process. A device that fits more naturally into an existing clinical workflow.

The wow factor doesn’t always need to be loud. Sometimes, it’s the quiet relief of a product that finally makes sense.

This is where early feedback from users, stakeholders, and subject matter experts becomes valuable. Teams should involve the right voices before the design is too far along, because people are more likely to give honest feedback when they believe the product can still change.

By the time a product feels finished, feedback often becomes softer, less direct, and less useful.

Lesson 7: Think Like Bottle Product Designers, But Build Like Medical Experts

There’s a reason bottle product designers obsess over dispensing, grip, storage, flow control, materials, closure mechanisms, and mess reduction. The package is part of the product experience.

Medical device teams should think the same way.

The enclosure, interface, handle, screen, tubing path, cartridge, tray, door, button, alarm, app, packaging, instructions, and setup process are all part of the user experience. Each one can either reduce friction or create it.

But medical device development also requires more discipline than consumer packaging. A medical product needs to support usability, safety, regulatory expectations, risk management, verification, validation, manufacturability, documentation, and real-world use.

That’s why successful medical product design requires both creativity and rigor.

Better Design Starts by Asking Better Questions

The Heinz ketchup bottle teaches a simple lesson: the product inside can be great, but the experience still matters.

For medical device designers, that lesson becomes even more important. Users don’t just need a product that functions. They need a product that communicates clearly, fits their workflow, supports safe use, and can be manufactured consistently.

Good design asks better questions earlier, such as:

What does the user expect to happen?
What does the design suggest they should do?
Where could confusion or misuse occur?
What friction can we remove?
What should we test before we commit?
What will this design require in manufacturing?
What would make users choose this product again?

At Kablooe, we help teams answer those questions through Design Driven Development®, human factors thinking, prototyping, engineering, and practical product strategy.

If your product is starting to feel a little like the old ketchup bottle (useful but harder to use than it should be), it may be time to rethink the experience.