What’s Under the Kitchen Sink?

Overview

In the twen­ty-first cen­tury, orga­nized liv­ing spaces are more preva­lent than ever. Orga­ni­za­tional sys­tems have been designed and redesigned in an attempt to make spaces more accom­mo­dat­ing. The scope for this project was to step back and ana­lyze why cur­rent sys­tems are not work­ing to their full poten­tial and cre­ate a solu­tion that would be a bet­ter fit.

First, we need­ed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate issues with prod­ucts that were cur­rently out on the mar­ket, then deci­pher whether the issues revolved around usable space, aes­thet­ics or accessi­bil­ity. The objec­tive of the design weighed heav­ily on user data col­lected through sur­veys, pho­tographs, and con­sumer opin­ions on how the space should be defined. The pri­ma­ry con­cerns of poten­tial cus­tomers were evi­dent upon com­ple­tion of research, thus allow­ing the team to move towards the idea devel­op­ment process. This process includ­ed sketch­es and ren­der­ings of pos­si­ble design solu­tions.

The design need­ed to sat­isfy the needs of most poten­tial con­sumers, rather than tar­get­ing a spe­cific group. By design­ing a customiz­able sys­tem, our final prod­uct affords bound­less oppor­tu­ni­ties in vary­ing kitchen lay­outs and is eas­ily acces­si­ble, afford­able and easy to clean.

Research Findings

From our user research, we found that prob­lems under the sink can be cat­e­go­rized into three main groups: feel­ings about the space, the phys­i­cal space itself, and orga­ni­za­tion of the prod­ucts stored in the space. We found that if we addressed feel­ings about the space and the phys­i­cal space itself, we would be able to change how a per­son uses the space.

Ideation

We sketched many ini­tial prod­uct con­cepts, and I also cre­at­ed the fol­low­ing quick sketch to show a pos­si­ble web inter­face for cus­tomers to design their ide­al under sink stor­age area.

Final Renderings & Scenarios

Sce­nario 1

“I am an elder­ly woman. I dis­like hav­ing to get down on my hands and knees and try to rum­mage around in the back of the cab­i­net search­ing for prod­ucts that I am not even sure are down there still. What I would enjoy is hav­ing all of the prod­ucts up front so that I do not have to bend down and reach to get them. I also do not like to see the dirty pipes and have them near my clean­ing prod­ucts. I would, how­ev­er, like to be able to get to the pipes in case the plumber comes.”

 

 

Sce­nario 2

“I’m a dude. I don’t actu­al­ly pay much atten­tion to what is under there. Ummm.…I guess if I could design it, I would like to have a place where I can throw my trash, and some box­es where I can throw my junk.”

 

Sce­nario 3

“I am a sin­gle mom. I have four love­ly chil­dren who are quite mis­chie­vous and must be mon­i­tored at all times. What is most impor­tant to me is to have every­thing in its place and hav­ing it orga­nized. I would like to keep my prod­ucts hid­den from my guests as well as my kids.”