This project starts from New York retailers' inquiries about compact appliances for kitchens in urban apartments. However, the market data doesn't show any significant growth in the compact appliance segmentation. Design team wants to probe on this opportunity with research and concept ideation:
Explore potential opportunities of compact kitchen – Define who is maintream user of compact kitchen – Design a kitchen to fulfill their specific lifestyle
Camouflaged compact kitchen unit integrates bar table, cooktop, refrigerator, oven, dishwasher all together through a sliding structure concept.
This idea integrates bar table, counter top, work table and appliances together as an independent furniture. In cooking or working scenario, the user can slide different table out.
This idea is the small version of last idea of integration, it integrates bar table, cooktop, refrigerator and dishwasher together. It's designed for gathering of small group, like 2 or 3 people.
"Cooking Party Station" is designed for 4 people cook together collaboratively , on the floor-standing table there are two preparation and cooking space, in the hanging part, there are air-frying oven which can be pulled down, range hood and cabinets for storage.
Cooking table with rotary chairs: The table has countertop height and induction cooktop integrated inside. Rotary chairs are small refrigerators and storage space. This is designed for two people who live in urban compact apartment.
Research and Synthesis Process
Based on the data from U.S. Census Bureau and other industry report, housing units with less than 750 sf take 11% of the national whole, and compact apartment smaller than 500 sf is a market segmentation bigger enough to focus on, especially in the metropolitan area of major cities. However, most of them have been modeled to the existing big-size appliances. It costs a lot to remodel a kitchen than just replacing appliance inside.
Opportunities for compact kitchen and appliance exist in below areas: Newly constructed small apartment/condo, new apartment hotel, secondary kitchen at big houses and kitchen remodeling in small housing units.
Due to the budget issue, this project couldn't conduct any formal user research outside Louisville among these target personas. I just interviewed several designers at GE IDO and conducted three co-cooking research with design interns. I look them as the Young Graduate.
Finds of Interview and Survey
-Motivation of cooking includes enjoying the process, pleasure of serving a family, just survival, etc.
-Facing the fast life cadence, some people plan the dinner for a whole week in advance, some people often skip their breakfast and take a very simple lunch.
-Several designers often use delivery service like Blue Apron, almost 3 times a week, in order to save time and efforts on grocery shopping and preparation.
-Below diagram shows all the recipes which are mentioned or discussed during the research interview:
