Amazon's Automatic Smart Soap Dispenser -- with a built-in timer and Alexa integration to make those 20 seconds more fun -- is designed to keep your handwashing habits up to snuff. Besides ...

The soap dispenser could have looked like anything. Most important to Flynn McGarry was to have a stylish vessel in keeping with the aesthetic of Gem Home, his new store and cafe in Manhattan.

Nathalie Stämpfli's "Soap Flakes" dispensers fix this. They shave bars of soap into soap flakes, which are quick to foam, and the dispensers are hard to drop. One is fixed to a wall, operated by ...