The Interpreter

In late 2002, Kotchka's group funded the early stage of an ambitious project to develop an entirely new product with Ideo, the Palo Alto firm famous for designing the Palm V. But where to start? After reviewing hundreds of suggestions from senior executives, Kotchka and her team came up with the holy grail: "Reinvent bathroom cleaning." Everyone knows cleaning the bathroom stinks -- literally and figuratively. It's pure drudgery. A team of Proctoids was shipped to Ideo to redesign this unpleasant task.

The cultural transition from P&G-land (where everything has a protocol) to Ideo world (where the whole point is to rupture tradi-tional ways of thinking) was rocky. One P&G manager called from the meetings in a panic, Kotchka recalls, saying, " 'They have no process. This is chaos, and we need to get them on the P&G process.' " Kotchka sent the executive back to learn that although the design process doesn't look like P&G's, it is one -- one that values brainstorming and the rapid-fire creation of new products.

Designers "listen with their eyes," in Kotchka's words. So the group spent many hours watching consumers clean their bathrooms. They focused on "extreme users," ranging from a professional house cleaner who scrubbed grout with his fingernail to four single guys whose idea of cleaning the bathroom was pushing a filthy towel around the floor with a big stick. If they could make both users happy, they figured they had a home run. One big idea -- a cleaning tool on a removable stick that could both reach shower walls and get into crannies -- got the green light quickly. Consumers loved the prototype, patched together with repurposed plastic, foam, and duct tape. Some refused to return it.

The P&G employees thought they were done, but they were just beginning. Now it was time to actually design the thing. The result, 18 months and multiple iterations later -- a speed record for P&G -- is the Mr. Clean Magic Reach bathroom cleaner. Rich Harper, design manager for household care, holds one with the tender care normally reserved for a newborn. He caresses the blue lever that connects the pole to the cleaning head, showing how its color and audible "click" when snapped on correctly are design signals that help the consumer understand the product. "It's those little details that have really made a difference," he says.

Harper highlights the round holes on the blue (blue = clean) foam head of the product. They have no function, but help to convince the buyer that it is squishy enough to fit behind the toilet. And the silver color of the pole? It signifies that "touch of magic" associated with Mr. Clean's brand. The Magic Reach came to market in February, and early data are promising: One woman was overheard saying she had "lust in her heart" for it.

Kotchka is thrilled with the Magic Reach experience but knows she has a long way to go. "There are still a lot of people who don't know what [design] is," she says. She spends most of her time as a combination goodwill ambassador and firefighter. This morning, she's in an urgent meeting with the head of global human resources; since she took over, the number of designers at the company has more than tripled, and she's adding new bodies as fast as she can. Last November, she hosted a "design tasting" for P&G's top 200 executives, for whom her group transformed P&G's learning center into a showcase of design case studies. Kotchka also benchmarked more design-sensitive companies such as Mattel and Nike. In 2003, she created the P&G Design Board, an advisory board whose members include General Motors' Bob Lutz and Ivy Ross, head of design at Old Navy. It meets every four months to go over new-product concepts and provide fresh ideas.

And then there's the Clay Street Project, P&G's attempt to bring innovation in-house. In a brick-walled loft in a gritty Cincinnati neighborhood, it is P&G's new skunkworks, where cross-functional teams spend 10 weeks away from their day jobs to create new brands. "Coming from marketing," says Maile Carnegie, marketing director for hair care, "design's kind of gone from a peripheral whatever to something that I intellectually understood. But working this way has taken me . . . to a visceral understanding."

Kotchka can only laugh her trademark big laugh and lament all that has yet to be done. But by straddling two worlds with aplomb, she has helped create a model for other companies to follow.

Jennifer Reingold is a Fast Company senior writer.