TRIcook

Abstract

This graduation project is done for Tristar Europe B.V. The company’s core portfolio consists of domestic appliances, with a strategy to produce low-cost products in China to sell in a low price segment in Europe. However, the focus of the company is slowly changing and Tristar wants to become a more competitive and progressive brand. Tristar has detected an opportunity in their growing Funcooking section: developing a new product to take the lead in this market segment. The company desired a product that responds to the growing problem of obesity and help people cook together in a fun and healthy way. Research questions were set up to gain information about the company, funcooking, cooking & food, the market, context and obesity. The questions were answered during the analysis by retrieving the needed information through Tristar, literature research, an expert opinion and user research. The goal of this analysis was to formulate a grounded philosophy for the product that had to be designed. The ideal social cooking experience is like the Dutch Sinterklaas celebration with surprise gifts; the excitement and curiosity on forehand and spending the evening together in a cozy and relaxed atmosphere. Next to these feelings, people want to discover good food, feel balanced and share new experiences. Five core values regarding a dinner ritual were extracted; creating a cozy and relaxed atmosphere, togetherness, anticipatory pleasure, consciousness and activeness. These all contribute to enjoyment; enjoying each other and enjoying the food. With a design direction derived from the analysis, the ideation and conceptualization was started. The aim was to design a social cooking and eating ritual in combination with a corresponding funcooking device which evokes the diners in trying this new ritual. All ideas were built around the storyboard which tells the intended story of the social cooking ritual and keeps the core values in mind. Different parts of this storyboard were put into a timeline, each part having different designed solutions. By intuitively combining these solutions, the strongest ‘tracks’ in telling the intended story were extracted. The ‘TRIcook with app’ was chosen and further embodied. TRIcook ritual: The host will use the phone App to explore and decide on basic ingredients thereby afterwards sending invitations in which the diners will be asked to come up with a course based on these ingredients. Both the host and the invited diners will experience a growing curiosity due to the task. The diners will work together to create each course and the dinner will exist of cooking and tasting the different small courses after another. Working together creates togetherness and will be even strengthened by sharing all dishware and by presenting food to each other. Tasting and being conscious about the food is an important part of this ritual. TRIcook device: Using the TRIcook device, everybody is working together to create a dish: cutting on the three cutting boards, cooking on the three grill-devices and presenting this using the three plates. All parts are triangular and the arrangement will adapt to the users during the ritual, which contributes to the interaction with each other and the food. The plates and cutting boards have respectively a bended and hinged corner, which will invite the diners to pick it up, pass it around and present it to the other diners. Furthermore, pinchers are included eating tools for being in close contact with the food. A user test was performed to test if the diners encounter the intended social and food interactions during the ritual and whether this leads to a fun, cozy and healthy experience. This validation was twofold: on one hand the scenario with the tasks and the multiple courses and on the other hand the interaction with the designed product on the table.