GE's Ingenious Idea for Simplifying Every Gadget in Your Kitchen
Keri Johnson stashed this in Home and Garden
Source: http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/ge-e...
An all-in-one kitchen gadget might sound more like a tacky SkyMall tchotchke than an eco-innovation, but unlike other solutions that bodge together half a dozen different devices, EcoSwitch is all about streamlining. Damon’s team noticed that blenders, hot pots, and coffee makers each had their own plastic housings and power supplies, but at their core they either heated a vessel or rotated it.
EcoSwitch is able to replace half a dozen gadgets that crowd tiny kitchens.
By combining a single motor and a high-efficiency induction heating coil with a selection of purpose built containers, EcoSwitch is able to replace half-a-dozen gadgets that crowd tiny kitchens. Fewer appliances plugged into the wall means less energy lost to phantom load and a single device reduces the amount of raw materials that are wasted.
Stashed in: Green, Design!, SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!, LEGOS!!!, Kitchen!
I'm convinced. Where can I buy?
Oh.
It's not available for sale, it's just a "design concept":
GE turned to Frog to figure it out. “We could have done anything from trying to design a better lightbulb to imagining a nuclear-powered consumer product,” says Jonas Damon, creative director at Frog. Ultimately, Frog bypassed the opportunity to design a countertop Chernobyl in favor a kitchen gadget called EcoSwitch that combines the functionality of a tea kettle, slow cooker, hot plate, and blender into a single, energy-efficient package.
GE, shut up and take my money.
I want a nuclear powered consumer product! A fridge-sized personal reactor would rock.
I guess there are many ways to solve this problem.
Other designers have approached this problem, breaking kitchen appliances down into a Lego-like kit of parts, pairing them with responsive apps, or making them pull double duty as manufacturing equipment, but EcoSwitch is the first implementation that makes the concept seem like a viable commercial strategy
Legos. I like that.
12:40 PM Dec 04 2013