Portfolio

Challenge:

The Städa Kitchen (Swedish "städa", for "tidy", and "clean") was created as a result of my Master's thesis at the SFSU School of Design. The original design challenge was to address the frustrations with clutter and efficiency in managing dishes; specifically, the frustrations that are felt by adults in urban areas who share their home with other adults. 

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Research:

Statistics reveal a national trend of professional adults living with housemates in response to the dramatic divergence between real income and the cost of housing in urban areas.

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Immersion and survey research found that the most frustrating things about cooking and cleaning in a shared kitchen are:

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• Not enough space to clean and dry dishes

• Roommates leaving dirty pans + dishes all over counters

• Cluttered sink

• Finding clean pans and utensils/items locked in dishwasher

• The lack of control

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Meanwhile, extensive interviews with kitchen product industry representatives found that kitchen environments are built for the nuclear family on the ideal of the 1950's home-maker, a family unit with one cook cycle, and do not cater to the needs of this growing generation of home-sharing adults.
 

Design Problem:​

Adults who share their home need affordable, beautifully designed products that enable efficiency, organization, and conservation in the management of dishes and cookware in a shared kitchen.

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Methods:​

To come up with a solution for this design problem, I used the following design tools:

• Persona Creation

• Journey Mapping

• Morphology Analysis

• Morphology Matrix

• Sketch Ideation

• CAD

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Results:​

This kitchen system and the component products are filed with the U.S. Patent office.