Re: OP research
Another ID person. CCAD ID division Columbus Ohio Alumni myself.
Something that may be of interest to you is the story of Ron Popeil. His family was in the business of making solutions to kitchen drudgery. You may find a book with an odd title:
"What The Dog Saw" by Malcom Gladwell to be worth your time to read.
If it hasn't been mentioned to you before, "Design for the Real World" by
Victor Papanek takes a look into some methods of thinking that would relate to
the quest you are on.
Electrolux, whom we usually think of as a vacuum cleaner producer, spends
considerable effort in ID to innovate products for the future. Their "Heart of the Home" kitchen range is an attempt to address the way we cook in the kitchen.
Electrolux 'Heart of the Home' kitchen concept | Electrolux Design Lab
As for myself, my indoor kitchen is a "galley" an rather small. So I have to take a minimalist approach at getting as much utility from as few cooking devices as I can.
The devices would be food processors, meat cutting & grinding, and vegetable processing equipment. I'm left with the choice of purchasing semi processed foods
such as shredded cheese to skip the labor of processing.
One product I've found worthwhile for myself is the turbo convection cooker.
Especially the ones where the heater blower and bowl fit down over top of the food
to seal on the cooking surface. These are surprising in the range of what they can do. They exceed the range of usefulness of a Micro Wave.
Speaking of Micro Waves, In high school science class we had a guest speaker once who spoke to us about the future and in the discussion he spent some time talking about Micro Wave Ranges. Called Radar Ranges by some then.
Toward the end of his discussion he asked for ideas. I raised my hand and asked if it would ever be possible to have one where if you turned the knob to the other direction that it would cool instead of heat. The Teacher was approaching me quickly with an angry expression. The speaker stopped him just in time explaining that I had a good idea. Teacher thought I was just another smart azz giving his guest
a hard time.
A few years later I was watching a science program "the next step" or "beyond 2000" and they showed one and the technology it took to make it function. Interestingly enough these were considered experimental and they would be found on "The Space Shuttles". But they worked on sound frequency as engineers had found that when things vibrate at certain frequencies, they get cold. At other frequencies they get hot. The technology that makes the microwave heat was discovered by accident in England during WW2 with the development of RADAR.
That device is the "Magnetron Tube".
But as I learned when I worked in product & packaging.....so many of the ideas
we have now are revivals of old idea that may have been ahead of their time then.
But with new processes, materials, and innovations of thinking they can be made
into workable solutions.
One way of looking at the kitchen issues is to take a square drawn on paper and divided into 4 smaller squares. In the top left, ideas that work well and have been successful. In the upper right, ideas that worked but need more research and development. In the lower left, ideas that failed and yet gave some insights but will
likely be marginal. In the lower right, Sure fired Failures.
Considering using this as an evaluation technique. Those in sales and marketing
sure love it. And in time you will likely work, as I once did, between Engineers and Salespeople. If you're lucky you'll have an Engineer boss who makes order and sense out of each day. Not a Sales Manager boss who lets the sales staff make your life resemble a Dilbert Cartoon. My Engineer boss had his cubical wall papered with Dilbert Cartoons. IM me if you wish to discuss ideas.
