Cooking product interface related to aging population

Abstract: This Masters Thesis has been performed at Electrolux Cookers Plant in
Adelaide and Electrolux Industrial Design Centre in Sydney, Australia. The
Electrolux plant in Dudley Park, Adelaide, houses the Research & Development
team and manufactures built-in and freestanding cooktops and ovens. The
Electrolux Industrial Design Centre in Sydney are responsible for the
design of all Electrolux products on the Australian and parts of the Asian
market.
Due to improved medical care and increased standards of living the world’s
populations is getting older and older.
Since many elderly have impaired memory, vision, hearing or mobility, the
demands on products for these consumers increase. Today there are a lack of
products on the market suited for the demands of elderly, and Electrolux
see a big potential in this group of buyers.
We were asked by the R&D department at Electrolux to develop
recommendations for the design of cooking product interfaces related to an
aging population, and investigate how segmentation will affect buying
decisions within this group. A case study was to be made where our findings
would be used to design a new cooktop and rangehoodcombination.
Using a systematic development work to ensure a structured process, resarch
was made through benchmarking, the catalogue method, a survey and a focus
group meeting. Among other things, the conclusions were that touch controls
are not recommended, nor multifunctional controls. When controlling a
cooktop, as many senses as possible should be involved to ensure that
proper feedback is given. Induction is the safest technology but elderly
may have acceptance problems with “new” technology, therefore new cooktops
should be designed to resemble old ones. Also, cleaning aspects proved to
be a very important issue. Another thing to consider is that colors can
mean different things in differentcultures, and reading directions in
different languages can affect the understanding of controls and interfaces.
It was furthermore found that ”Elderly” is not a segmentation group of its
own. People that have a certain personalitywill still be the same person
when he or she is getting older. Electrolux are using four segmentation
groups when developing new products, and our findings are that the same
groups can be used even for older people. Products should therefore not be
aimed especially to elderly but instead be user friendly enough for elderly.
From our findings and recommendations an interface was developed where the
rangehood is controlled from the cooktop via radiolink. Using hand
sketches, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator different designs were
tried anda final concept was chosen. The resulting controls consists of
buttons that give tactile feedback when they are pressed, and the
indicators for heat resemble traditional twist controls. All graphics are
backlit to increase readability, and graphics on the buttons are embossed
to give tactile redundance. To avoid cultural problems all controls have
been designedusing globally known concepts such as “up”, “down” and the
movement of the clock.
Since the developed interface was liked by Electrolux we were asked to show
how the same interface could be used to control all types of cooktops
including gas, electric and induction. We were also asked to look at how
product segmentation could be made by adding or removing features or making
small design changes. This resulted in a whole product range with 19
different cooktops and rangehoods where heating technology, small color
changes and feature changes are used for segmentation. We were invited to
Electrolux Industrial Design Centre in Sydney to build a mock up on one of
the models in their workshop and to present the project for Mr. Lars
Erikson, the design director for Asia and Australia.
The project has been on a conceptual level and the resulting products are
not being produced. However, the feedback from Electrolux has been very
positive, and they plan to review our work in detail when they start their
next design project on cooktops.