Product Design Interventions to Solve Issues Faced in the Use of a Hand-Held Blender in Domestic Use

Abstract

Hand-held blending equipment is commonly used in beating eggs, cookie, pakora batter and cake mixes. Human powered stirrers, churners, blenders demand usage of both hands in mixing food ingredients. The paper presents an overview of issues faced by user in the usage of the various common hand-held blenders in Indian kitchens. The paper presents a scope of simplification of the human interaction with the blender equipment to ease the activity of blending food ingredients. Among the available hand-held blenders, some are limited to be used only with small quantity of food, while some employ both hands of the user for stability. Most importantly, almost all are meant for metal or plastic containers. There is a need to study the issues faced in beating, blending and mixing activity and the human interaction with the available blenders. An analysis of issues thus provides insights that are used to design a hand-held blender which could be operated by using single hand. A set of role play activity trials are done to further test some proposed design concepts. Finally, insights are gathered which would be useful in prototype development. This product could be safely used in different open containers including glass vessel.