Coto
The Cook Together set, is ideal for those who wish to spend quality with their loved ones while preparing a meal.
Prompt: Design a product that meets the needs and wants for a user that practices an everyday ritual.
Problem
A good majority of people, specifically the younger generations, don’t often cook much. Whether its due to lack of interest or simply being too busy this interferes with the ritual of coming together for dinner. This development can ripple across centuries and affect us for futures to come.
Examining the ritual
We interviewed various people such as professional cooks, stay at home moms, International housing parents and even some students to better understand the ritual of cooking.
Their feedback gave us insight to the different methods, traditions and feelings that goes into cooking.
What people said
Space issues in their kitchen 70%
Clean while they cook 50%
Enjoys the social aspect 75%
Has a motivational process 62%
Cooking reminds them of the past 75%
Prefers to work with hands 87%
Likes to present their food 70%
Enjoys learning about new recipes 75%
Dislikes cleaning dishes 62%
Areas of opportunity
Through much research we decided on the opportunities that we wanted to focus on.
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Configuration of preexisting kitchen space
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Improvement of large equipment
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Bringing people together or reconnecting people
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Incorporating new and old traditions
Our Goal
To bring people together through cooking, by understanding culture and also working with the preexisting kitchen layout to promote togetherness while at the same time incorporating some technology to ease the cooking experience.
Inspiration
While learning more about our ritual, we found inspiration in Korean BBQ and hot pot restaurants, which allow people to cook together.
The experience is great but meals can get pretty pricey and most people wouldn't go out to eat like this often.
Testing the hardware
We were conflicted of whether the hot plate area would be electric or induction so we decided to experiment to see which hot plate cooked the BBQ faster.
The Winner
As a result from our test we decided to go with an induction hot plate as it could still cook BBQ just fine, heats up faster and it is much easier to clean.
Understanding the kitchen layout
We looked at different kitchen layouts and imagined where everyone would be standing while preparing items or cooking.
User
POV
After looking at the layouts, we realized that the island and peninsula floor plans were the only ones that allowed users to face each other. This pushed us to design a concept that would be ideally used on a dinner table.
Render and refine
Exploring ideas
We explored many different ideas incorporating the opportunities we wanted to focus on and chose certain aspects that we liked about each concept.
After pointing out certain aspects, forms and functions of each ideas we started to hone in on some concepts.
prepping food together
facing each other
mutli-functional
Large size table top appliance
All-in-one unit
Mocking it up
We made several different foam core mock-ups in the beginning to explore but then started to focus on the One Kit concept.
Test Model
After exploring a few features we built a final test model base to see how some features would fit.
We both liked this oval-like egg shape for the overall form of the base.
Adding cups to the concept encourage the idea of bringing people together.
Incorporating a modular aspect to the One Kit concept was another goal
The MDF base gave us an idea on unit size and fillets added to the base.
We 3D printed different size cups to makes sure they would fit in the base.
Building our set
Teamwork
The maple wood base
Almost done!
Teamwork
Coto
This project was a collaboration with Fernando Bustos.
Please view process book here.
Thank you!
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