Kitchen Series
Design Team Project - Spring 2020
A Series of Kitchen Items Designed to get Children to Cook with Their Parents
My Role
Product Designer | Graphic Designer
Skills
Product Design | Graphic Design | CAD: Rhino 7 | Rendering: Unreal Engine |Adobe Photoshop
Project Goal
Upper-middle-class parents often don’t want their kids to help in the kitchen because of the mess. They also don’t want their kitchen cluttered by childish-looking objects. Children don’t want to cook because it isn’t fun. The challenge was to combine the needs of these two user groups to create a kitchen series that made both parents and their children want to cook together.
Additionally, the challenge of this project was to mimic the style of another designer. Our group was assigned to Ron Arad. Ron Arad is an Israeli Industrial Designer, known for his use of chrome and bold primary coloring.
Final Product
Design Process
Designer Research
We started out by researching our designer, Ron Arad. Ron Arad is an Israeli designer and architect who is always looking to design the first of anything. He loves exposed, shiny, silver metal. He works with curves in a unique way, trying to make each object appear as if it has a single, interesting, continuous flow. He uses bold block sections of, often primary, colors. These were some of the key stylistic and characteristic takeaways we made sure to keep in mind while brainstorming our design project.
To aid in our designs, we created a moodboard of Ron Arad's work.
Problem Definition and Ideation
Through mind mapping, we narrowed down our problem space to a few key issues children have in the kitchen and generated potential design solutions. We soon realized that in many cases our designs were for the parents, not the children. So, we decided to reframe and refine our problem statement to, “How can we make cooking more accessible, clean, and fun so that children and their parents want to make breakfast together?”
We decided against our floor mat and counter mat ideas because kitchens are commonly designed to have easily cleanable floors and counters. After eliminating a few other designs, we were left with three ideas; an egg cracker where you smash the egg, an interestingly shaped stool, and a mixing bowl that contains splashes while letting kids have fun with mixing.
Concept Selection and Initial Designs
We spent a long time working on the egg smasher idea but eventually scrapped it because we couldn’t find a way to keep the shell from mixing with the egg. However, from our discussion of the egg smasher, we realized that a small receptacle for the shells on the counter would keep things clean by giving children an easily accessible place to put food waste. This led to the egg smasher being replaced by a compost bin in our series.
Prototyping and Building
We received feedback that the bread stool looked like two independent pieces instead of one object. We wanted to address this in the prototype, as it goes against one of Ron Arad’s core aesthetics.
We made the bread stool out of cardboard, full scale to test the form and function. We made more of a smooth transition from the circular base to the bread loaf top to make it feel like one continuous object. During limited user testing, we received feedback that it didn’t feel like you were teetering on the edge, which was one of our concerns.
We made the compost bin from cardboard to test the form and sizing of the object. While testing was limited, it was successfully used to determine the size we wanted. We also pivoted slightly during prototyping, changing the food from strips of bacon to a banana peel with fewer breaks and more curves.
Redesign and Final Concept
Through accidental user testing, we discovered the bread stool is usable as an end table.
Taking into account user feedback, we made iterative changes and modeled our final designs. We also received feedback from other studio groups, which informed many of the changes in the final itteration.
People responded positively to the new form of the stool and suggested the addition of handles, steps, and making it collapse for storage. In response, we added a hand hole that flows with the curve and cuts entirely through the object. This creates handles without breaking the flow and is reminiscent of some of Ron Arad’s chair designs.
We chose not to include steps because we didn’t think they were necessary and they would disrupt the form. Similarly, we didn’t make the stool collapsible because it is intended to function as a sculpture when not in use like many of Ron Arad’s designs.
While feedback on the compost bin was mostly positive, many pointed out the need for a lid. We agreed and included a lid, with a similar handle to the bread stool in the next prototype. We also tried inverting the direction of the peel.
We received feedback that most people, like us, preferred the inverted peel design but the lid seemed wrong. Our Professor noted that it looked wrong because we should be seeing the unpeeled banana as the lid, so we designed a new lid for the final prototype that flows seamlessly into the body of the banana when connected.
We received feedback that the egg bowls “teeth” were too sharp, as well as feedback that the locking mechanism wasn’t clearly visible. We responded in future iterations by dulling the teeth and removing them entirely from one side. This allows the locking mechanism to work better, by the toothed half sliding into the other side, and gives the appearance of the egg “breaking” when the two halves are split apart.
We also made the top half transparent to let users see what is going on inside. In our final iteration, we also changed the accent color from yellow to white to separate it from the compost bin.
Lessons Learned
My biggest takeaway from this project was the importance of cohesion across design series. IT was very difficult, particularly with the egg bowl, to make the designs feel connected to one another. We found that using the same material, and similar curvature makes the designs feel more connected.
Moving forward, the next step with this project would be to construct higher fidelity prototypes. One issue we might have is weight, as all objects are made of thick metal. Higher fidelity prototypes would also allow for additional user testing and further refinement of our ideas.