A Kitchen for Life

Abstract

The planet cannot keep sustaining our linear economy much longer. Industries are moving circular to reduce environmental impact. The kitchen industry has to change. CIK (the Circular Kitchen) is a research project that develops a circular kitchen: a product-service system for tenants in social housing in the Netherlands. The product is aimed to be market ready in 2022 and should have significantly less negative environmental impact. The partners in this project are material suppliers, part suppliers, a kitchen manufacturer, a contractor, housing associations and tenants. For a functioning and viable design, all stakeholders must cooperate. This graduation project started with investigating what tensions the circular kitchen might bring for social housing tenants and finds a solution for this. With an integral approach, the life of the tenants in the kitchen was researched along with the changes that the circular kitchen brings. All aspects of design were taken into account: technology, business and people. The approach for this project, an ‘iterative representation of the basic design cycle’, is combined with methods from service design and user-centered design. This project is divided in three consecutive cycles. Every cycle contains different phases: framing, envisioning, realisation and validation. In each cycle the design is iterated and refined. The assignment and problem definition form the basis and starting point for analyses. CIK, the stakeholders, and the background of the problem are researched. ‘Design A’ is evaluated in user research. The context of the problem was investigated by using literature studies and context-mapping with tenants. The context-mapping sessions provided a holistic view on the life of the user in the kitchen. It appeared that tenants differ in their perception of the kitchen. Their kitchen has an emotional or functional role and their activity in the kitchen are either individually or socially focused. These findings are visualised in a framework that shows four types of social housing tenants (Figure 1). Additionally, shared values were found among this research group (Figure 2).
In cycle B new knowledge that was retrieved from user research is framed to start refining the design. The service- side of CIK needed development: new insights were translated into an integral service concept that tackles conflicts that can arise between circular interest and the tenants. The input of the evaluation of the design with the major stakeholder - the kitchen manufacturer - resulted into the introduction of a new partner that drives the organisation as a whole: Het Keukencollectief. An intermediary that guides all stakeholders and is the key to a successful and fertile business. Cycle C is focused on detailing the intermediary (Het Keukencollectief), the service, and the front-end of the service (digital web-app). Research demonstrated that the business should focus on both the basic kitchen and on upgrade possibilities. This formed the basis of a newly created digital platform. A final evaluation of the front-end design of the service showed that the design was attractive for the tenant and functioned as envisioned. To conclude, this report describes a user-centered design process in multiple iterative cycles resulting in a design proposal for a service system to facilitate a circular kitchen for social housing in the Netherlands. The most important addition to the current project is the design of the intermediary ‘Het Keukencollectief’ with the front-end service design.