Support while Cooking

Check is the strategy of design process. Amidst a lot of suggestions , corrections and quest for potential improvements, the relevance of designed product for the intended user / stakeholders may decrease. As such, this would hinder the innovation process and never let the product receive a good enough reponse for mass production. Therefore, keeping the original intended problems that were aimed to solve and key points derived from comprehending it,  a strategy/ or a system of key checks  is necessary to ensure the design process goes ahead in the correct direction.                                                         (Image used only for reference) Each and every of these checks should be satisfied at each and every modification step in the design process. For our support in cooking project, based on suggestions and discussions, these...

Comprehending the problem includes understanding all the aspects to arrive at design insights .  Aspects can include a wide variety of line of thoughts : from existing technologies to possible new ones , problems that may arrive with new ones, or the existing problems with similar products. To understand the context and constraints, visualize the entire scenario from both - the user's perspective and the designer's limitations to arrive at design  insights For our project, after interaction with primary users, some of the things we realised are that our design for protective equipment should be such that  it has anti-fogging properties otherwise its very inconvenient for use in kitchen. Some other problems that we found out are that is shouldn't block side view, shouldn't be heavy since its going to used by elderly etc.                                           (Image ...

  To study and understand the existing product or similar products in the market, its entire scenario with respect to target users and its positives and negatives, as experienced by them. This can be done by studying the available data and through a regular looped interaction with all the users and stakeholders at every stage of design process.                                                        (Image only for reference) However, to completely understand the context, merely talking to stakeholders isn't enough. A good solution and in-depth understanding can be developed only when the designer deeply empathizes with the people affected by problem and tries to 'live' the problem as close to reality as possible More than 80% of people we interacted with reported suffering minor oil droplet burns as frequently as twice a month. Simila...

An innovation via design process is always born out of a need to solve an existing problem. A problem whose scale extends beyond a specific person - to the level of a community, geographical area, or even entire nations.  Why this project? Using and dealing with hot oil while cooking is a part of our daily lives. Often, our elders working in kitchen never use any protection on their faces or hands to save them from hot oil droplets, often relying on their experience and expertise in completing the process without any accident. But disaster strikes the worst when you least expect it to.  And this is the reason we took up this issue. The activity of cooking is very basic and absolutely essential and due to this its possible harmful effects are often conveniently ignored. The acceptance for these harms, over the years, have been normalized to an extent where it almost doesn't even seem something to be avoided, rather, we have just accepted it as a part of our lives.    ...