Design Thinking

Tonight I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona. In front of me are three freestanding ranges,two refrigerators, five women, and a moderator. I am sitting in a dark room behind a one way mirror with several other of the team I work with bringing these products to market. The five women are in the process of dissecting the fine elements of the design on each of the products. I would imagine that these women have never thought this hard about cook top patterns, knob graphics, oven graphics, fonts, font size and window proportions ever in their entire lives. I know this by the amount of work the moderator is spending trying to evoke responses so we can refine the product for mass market appeal.To the credit of these women at first blush they don’t notice the subtle but significant differences so this is a difficult task in front of them. They will be earning their research dollars tonight.

The object of these three design are not only to invoke not only a more minimalistic, but also a lower color and form contrast statement in the kitchen compared to our current product offering. The difficult part of this exercise for me is waiting for the respondents to connect the dots and place the product into their own life, into their own kitchen and make a relationship between the two. What do you like? What don’t you like? Why? What makes it that way? shape? color? Too much contrast? Too little contrast?

I’m sitting on the edge of my chair looking at image collages these women have put together of their own kitchens and appliances, and dream kitchens listening patiently to how they describe them. Learning what excites them about products in their house, and what they want to have in their next kitchen appliance. What is so interesting to me is that by the end of the session the amount of insight these women have discovered about the differences between all of the designs in the cooking products in front of them. Some of the input given about the designs is wonderful glowing recognition of the hard work you’ve put into your design, but with the good comes the humble pie with the rejection of the concepts you’ve toiled and put your time into perfecting. What is amazing though are the little kernels of consumer insight your given on something you’ve taken for granted though many years of designing that will make the product just that much better from one little comment that resonated like a church bell.

I have been thinking a lot about grilling lately.  I recently went to the local store where you buy a grille. There are lots of grilles to be bought. The purchase price spans a very wide market from under a hundred dollars to a couple of thousand dollars.  My pocket book took me to about the $599.00 price point. That gets you great big beefy knobs, a stainless steel housing, stainless steel stand, four burners, side burner, and about 60,000btu output. Next the choice is how you want to cook. There is charcoal, Propane in either conventional burners or something called IR (Infra Red).

Being a self-professed foodie, backyard grilling idiot, and a person who will try anything at least once, decided to try out the IR grille. I have to admit I have some doubts about IR grilling. I watched videos on you tube on how to cook, and clean your IR grille. Listened to Chefs talk about their grilling experience with IR grilling. I have to tell you personally I love the grille. The food comes off the grille perfect. Grille marks, taste, and not dried out as what I occasionally experienced with normal propane burner grilling.

This now brings me back to the thinking part of the whole backyard grilling experience. what would you think of a backyard broiler configuration. It would be like grilling but from the top.

this so makes me want to ask many questions but to you of those inclined to post a response…..what is the backyard grilling experience to you?  Is it flames and charred meat, or a fabulous grilled food no matter if it is grilled from the top or the bottom?

Its a great debate, android/touch pads or iPhone/iPad to me it doesn’t make any difference because the platform no matter which they have changed the way we live our daily lives. Applications for these platforms have begun to saturate our lives in both insignificant and significant ways as I have an app to remember where I parked my car in cities where I am not too familiar with “Walk Me”; another to while away the time with “Angry Birds” inbetween flights since there is not a direct flight to anywhere I travel to these days. 

We at GE are working on our own set of applications to integrate into these platforms in the form of in-home energy monitoring of everything from the meter on the outside of your home to your home thermostat and refrigerator. Our imaginations are letting us explore every avenue in which these new platforms can be a part of our user experience. I know i dont need to “geo tag” my appliances, but hmmm think about it a piece of software that can tell me that someone has opened the refrigerator when I’m on vacation, my next call will be to the local sherriff to drive by my house and see if it’s ok.

My name is Kevin Laundroche I am an Industrial Designer with GE Appliances and have been with the company for the past ninteen years. I have designed in both a consulting envrionment and corporation since 1982. My expertise is centered around kitchen appliances such as electric and gas ranges, refrigerators, microwaves, air conditioners, and laundry products. In my career I have designed a wide variety of products and objects from tools to trains each has given me a new opportunity to learn and grow as a designer.

In this blog I hope to share with you some of the new and exciting things that the design community here at GE thinks about as we explore our environment and design products for the next generation of kitchen appliances.