ImaginativePRO Blog

WHAT GE'S INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS THINK YOUR KITCHEN WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2025 TO SUIT DOMESTIC LIFESTYLES OF THE FUTURE

So what did they come up with, exactly?  A compendium of innovations that we've seen glimmers of in prior coverage on Co.Exist. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Smart refrigerators, faucets that detect bacteria on produce, and 3-D printed dishes are just some of GE's predictions for the kitchen of 2025. Don't pass them off as unrealistic: GE has been right before.

A typical product development cycle for corporate industrial designers lasts two to three years, which means today's designers are working on products that won't hit shelves until 2015 or 2016.

In GE's appliance unit, four teams of industrial designers were asked to dream up what kinds of products they might expect the company to release in 2025 to suit the domestic lifestyles of the near future. More conceptual than practical, the Home 2025 challenge invited designers at GE Appliance's home base in Louisville, Kentucky, to combine research on cultural and demographic trends--like an aging U.S. population, the decrease in demand for larger homes, and the increasing demand for fresh produce--as well as technological shifts to imagine how products should evolve to match a new American life. The results are both tangible and thoughtful.

"The kitchen is sort of disappearing," Lenzi says, at least in the sense of a territorially bounded space. "Now it's part of the overall environment. [...] Kitchen appliances need to become part of that overall connected system."  (Click Image To Enlarge)

While some critics have questioned the necessity of a Wi-Fi-equipped toaster, GE's project sheds some light on the motivations for why we'd even want to have interconnected kitchen systems. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Lou Lenzi, industrial design director for GE Appliances, explains. 

"Each group was assigned not just a living environment.  But we also asked the teams to break up and look at personas or do some scenario-planning."

Those scenarios include a house for empty-nesters, another for a young, tech-savvy couple, a third for young people living in an "emerging urban environment" like Detroit, and another for an adult taking care of an elderly parent.

As homes shrink, you can save space by finding appliances that do more than one thing, like an entertainment center that also has cooking capabilities, for example. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Or a refrigerator could be part of a system that takes inventory, suggests recipes based on what's about to go bad, curates shopping lists, and places orders for food delivery. (Click Image To Enlarge)

So what did they come up with, exactly? A compendium of innovations that we've seen  glimmers of in prior coverage on Co.Exist. While the teams focused on the whole home, their take on the kitchen was particularly interesting.

Lenzi says, at least in the sense of a territorially bounded space. 

"The kitchen is sort of disappearing.  Now it's part of the overall environment. [...] Kitchen appliances need to become part of that overall connected system."

That "system" is what you may have heard called the "Internet of things" (or the "industrial Internet" in GE-speak) by futurists and designers.

"You may set up a relationship with a local grocer or produce stand that would allow you to inventory-manage through the appliance," Lenzi explains (Click Image To Enlarge)

Deliveries would show up on demand and bring food directly into the home via an externally accessible fridge, so no one would need to be there to receive the order. Rinse produce in the sink, and the faucet's sensors would detect the presence of pernicious chemicals or bacteria. (Click Image To Enlarge)

While some critics have questioned the necessity of a Wi-Fi-equipped toaster, GE's project sheds some light on the motivations for why we'd even want to have interconnected kitchen systems. As homes shrink, you can save space by finding appliances that do more than one thing, like an entertainment center that also has cooking capabilities, for example. Or a refrigerator could be part of a system that takes inventory, suggests recipes based on what's about to go bad, curates shopping lists, and places orders for food delivery.

Other innovations focused on sustainability, like repurposing grey water from the dishwasher to circulate through other appliances, as well as educational apps to make home gardening easier. (Click Image To Enlarge)

GE is considering turning some of the 2-D renderings created for the project (and currently on display at the Cressman Center in downtown Louisville) into 3-D objects. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Lenzi explains. 

"You may set up a relationship with a local grocer or produce stand that would allow you to inventory-manage through the appliance."  

Deliveries would show up on demand and bring food directly into the home via an externally accessible fridge, so no one would need to be there to receive the order. Rinse produce in the sink, and the faucet's sensors would detect the presence of pernicious chemicals or bacteria. (No organic labels needed.)

Other innovations focused on sustainability, like repurposing grey water from the dishwasher to circulate through other appliances, as well as educational apps to make home gardening easier.

One particularly promising concept is for a technologically connected kitchen island. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Asked how much change is actually possible in a 12-year period, Lenzi replies that "in 2001, we did a kitchen-of-the-future project with Wired, and you saw the emergence of connectivity. And now we do have connectivity in our products." (Click Image To Enlarge)

Lenzi says.

"I think there's great value in this whole notion of personas and scenario-planning as we think about the future, and frankly speaking, I think this is just a great way to promote a dialogue about where we think the home is going on a larger scale."  

GE is considering turning some of the 2-D renderings created for the project (and currently on display at the Cressman Center in downtown Louisville) into 3-D objects. One particularly promising concept is for a technologically connected kitchen island.

Of course, we'll have to wait until at least 2025 to cook or clean with any of these appliances. Asked how much change is actually possible in a 12-year period, Lenzi replies that "in 2001, we did a kitchen-of-the-future project with Wired, and you saw the emergence of connectivity. And now we do have connectivity in our products."

More telling is a comparison between a similar project at GE in the 1960s. In a photograph, Arthur N. Becvar, the guy who had Lenzi's job 50 years ago, is sitting in his vision of the kitchen of the future. Appliances include an "electronic oven," "a frozen food locker," the "ice water and ice dispenser," and the "automatic plastic dishmaker." The first three--a toaster oven, freezer, and ice machine--are now standard in every kitchen. (Click Image To Enlarge)

A typical product development cycle for corporate industrial designers lasts two to three years, which means today's designers are working on products that won't hit shelves until 2015 or 2016. (Click Image To Enlarge) 

More telling is a comparison between a similar project at GE in the 1960s. In a photograph, Arthur N. Becvar, the guy who had Lenzi's job 50 years ago, is sitting in his vision of the kitchen of the future. Appliances include an "electronic oven," "a frozen food locker," the "ice water and ice dispenser," and the "automatic plastic dishmaker." The first three--a toaster oven, freezer, and ice machine--are now standard in every kitchen. The plastic dishmaker hasn't come around yet, but according to GE's designers, we'll finally get to make our dishes at home in 2025, using 3-D printer technology.

 
In GE's appliance unit, four teams of indsutrial designers were asked to dream up what kinds of products they might expect the company to release in 2025 to suit the domestic lifestyles of the near future. (Click Image To Enlarge)

 
More conceptual than practical, the Home 2025 challenge invited designers at GE Appliance's home base in Louisville, Kentucky, to imagine how products should evolve to match a new American life. The results are both tangible and thoughtful. (Click Image To Enlarge)

"Each group was assigned not just a living environment," explains Lou Lenzi, industrial design director for GE Appliances. "But we also asked the teams to break up and look at personas or do some scenario-planning." (Click Image To Enlarge) 

COMMENTARY:   The ideal kitchen "system" should incorporate smart technology, especially apps like a meal planner based on the specific needs and requirement of the consumer or household.  It should focus on a balanced diet and the nutritional needs of each consumer or members of the household.  Meals would be scheduled automatically throughout the week or month.   And the system would provide information about the fat, salt, calorie contents for each meal by serving size.    I also think that besides meal planning, the kitchen system of 2025 should include a meal budget, allowing consumers to establish food spending budgets.  The system would then plan the meals around that budget, insuring that spending is kept within those limits, but insuring optimal nutritial values for each meal.

Courtesy of an article dated August 26, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Exist

THE "PICTURE BOOK": AN INGENIOUS COOKBOOK THAT USES INFOGRAPHICS INSTEAD OF RECIPE INGREDIENT WORDS

EVER GET LOST IN A COOKBOOK’S LONG NARRATIVE OF INSTRUCTIONS? US TOO. ONE ILLUSTRATOR BOILED 50 RECIPES DOWN TO SIMPLE SKETCHES.

How do you make lasagna? Even though it’s not that complex of a dish, to spell out the methodology--the specific ingredients and the many small, easy steps of prep work--it would take me half a page of type or more.

But for designer/illustrator Katie Shelly, writer of Picture Cook: See. Make. Eat., the recipe for lasagna looks a lot different. It’s a simple sketch that deconstructs lasagna into its discrete components. So with a glance, anyone can learn how to layer cheese, noodles, sauce and meat to make the dish.

Click Image To Enlarge

Of course, illustration isn’t a new idea in cookbooks--drawings that show finder details of technique like dicing onions are mainstays in classic food tomes. Where Shelly’s illustrations become radical is their scope. Using a bare minimum of text, she depicts everything from a quickly blended Gazpacho to a 2-hour, 21-ingredient pho. The somewhat oddball idea came to Shelly when writing down a friend’s eggplant parmesan recipe over the phone.

Shelly tells Co.Design. 

“She started by saying ‘well first you get out three bowls …’ and so it was natural to just draw the three bowls in that moment, and then I stuck with drawing the rest of the recipe on this little scrap of paper.  That night when I got down to cooking, I pulled out the drawing of the recipe and found that it was really useable, more useable than a text recipe where you have to stop what you’re doing and read and re-read the steps.”

Click Image To Enlarge

From there, she pushed the idea further, drawing on a background in UX testing to create recipes and spot where her testers (friends) may may potentially go wrong. This honed her craft, so much so that you’ll probably be a little impressed by her subtle uses of iconography (like the number of flames below a pot slyly depicting relative temperature), but you’ll be downright shocked at her ability to make even the most involved from-scratch cooking look fun and approachable.

Shelly writes. 

“One of my goals for this book is to encourage people to just let go of rigid kitchen rules and be loose and free about cooking. The charm of the illustrations is great for its own sake, but it’s also performing a real function in helping make cooking feel easy, lighthearted, and do-able.  So what if you mess up? Once things get too serious, the drawings stop being inviting and start seeming intimidating. Like how people feel so oppressed by Ikea diagrams.”

Picture Cook won’t be released until October. But you can preorder it today for all of $11 on Amazon.

COMMENTARY:   I think this new cookbook is going to be very popular with cooking purists, and individuals who are learning how to cook.  I'm in.  For those of you interested in buying the new Picture Cook book, you can buy it at Amazon.com by clicking HERE.

Courtesy of an article dated April 30, 2013 appearing in Fast Company Design

PHILIPS' MICROBIAL HOME PROBE KITCHEN CREATES AN INTEGRATED CYCLICAL ECOSYSTEM WHERE NOTHING IS WASTED

It might look like something from an imaginary steampunk past, but designers at Philips think this could be the low-impact home of the future.

It’s called the Microbial Home. Created as part of Philips’ Design Probes program to “explore far-future lifestyle scenarios,” it is a vision for a collection of household appliances and fixtures that all work together in an “integrated cyclical ecosystem.”

The Microbial Home takes kitchen composting to its extreme, with a closed-loop system in which the waste products from one process are used as energy inputs for another.

The central hub is a “bio-digester island” which has a cutting surface, a gas range, and a bio-digester. Bacteria in the bio-digester feed on organic waste such as vegetable trimmings to produce a methane gas that powers the range and the lights and heats water. Dehydrated sludge from the digester can be used as compost.

Click Images To Enlarge

The connected “larder” includes a suspended vegetable garden and a terra cotta evaporative cooling unit built into the table, providing an alternative to energy-intensive refrigeration. Other elements of the Microbial Home include a beehive, a light powered by bioluminescent bacteria, and yes, a squatting toilet that captures “excreta” for the methane digester. There’s even a hand-cranked contraption for recycling plastic.

Click Images To Enlarge

Models of these concepts were shown at Piet Hein Eek gallery in Eindhoven for October’s Dutch Design Week, but it’s unlikely that we’ll actually working elements of the Microbial Home in stores anytime soon. Philips’ Probes are exercises in speculative design, intended to spark conversation and spur innovation.

Creating a cyclical eco-system. In the Microbial Home Probe we adopt a systemic approach to many of the domestic processes we take for granted and ask questions about how we deal with resources. It is a proposal for an integrated cyclical ecosystem where each function’s output is another’s input. We view the home as a biological machine to filter, process and recycle what we conventionally think of as waste – sewage, effluent, garbage, waste water. The Probe suggests that we should move closer to nature and challenges the wisdom of annihilating the bacteria that surround us. It proposes strategies for developing a balanced microbial ecosystem in the home.

The Microbial Home does serve as a nice illustration of one way we can make our homes more sustainable though. America wastes 27 percent of the food available for consumptionand about half the energy we produce. A domestic bio-digester can only help.

COMMENTARY:   The Microbial Home Probe kitchen does require an individual that is truly committed to self-sustained closed-loop system that recycles waste and reuses it to produce bacteria which in turn produces electricity.  It's a very cool looking, high-tech kitchen setup, and I have not seen anything like it before.  That honeybee maker is something else, and I would certainly like to know how you keep the bees and the queen bee happy in a confined space.  The Microbial Home Probe kitchen is still an experiment, and Philips has no plans to offer the kitchen for sale anytime soon, but it sure is intriguing if you are into cooking and sustainability.

Courtesy of an article dated October 31, 2011 appearing in Facebook Company Design