Building a spice rack based on user research
Overview
People need to store spices in cabinets that are designed near the top of the ceiling. For those that aren’t able to reach the highest shelves, they tend to store most of them on shelves that are reachable to them.
Our team found two problems with that:
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The space isn’t used entirely due to being inaccessible to certain people
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Spices are just placed being one another in an unorganized manner.
Challenge
We needed to design a product that would store spices in an accessible way where users wouldn’t have to reach up to take them. By exploring problem spaces that led to insights, brainstorming, prototyping and storyboarding the user experience, we designed a spice rack suitable to user’s needs.
What
Product Design/Usability Design
Taught at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago
18 weeks, 144 hours total
Approach: User Research
Needs & Specifications
Based on Universal Design, research was performed so that the user’s needs were taken into consideration. Specifications in terms of metric and quantity were also analyzed to design a spice rack to hold a maximum amount of spices that uses up a minimum amount of space.
Competitive Analysis
Through competitive research, we analyzed 7 direct competitors their advantages and disadvantages. Apart from the research, the team asked users how they hold their spices. Others used ordinary cabinet spice racks that hold a maximum of 15 spices while most of them just use the cabinets to store them. Competitive Analysis can be viewed here.
Prototyping
After creating our first prototype and testing it, we realized that there were a few issues that the testers discovered.
The pod that would contain the spice was too small e.g. it couldn’t contain the spices of a standard-sized McCormick Jar
The pod opening was too small to add any spices inside.
The prototype was fragile and wasn’t as visually appealing as expected i.e. the pods weren’t arranged evenly on the spice rack.
Usability Testing
What did the testers like? What did they want us to improve?
"Well-organized and it can hold a lot of spices! It would be helpful if the pods were transparent."
"Spices are easily accessible while the rack itself is mobile. It would be nice if the pod corners were round so spices aren't stuck in them."
"The rack is visually appealing and it can hold enough of each spice. It would be easier if the handle was bigger to grab."
Outcomes
After applying user-centered methods, we designed a Corn-Cob shaped spice rack with multiple levels. Each level of the spice rack holds 4 pods for 4 different spices. The levels can also rotate so users can view all spices at any time. Through user research, this product saves space by condensing the spice containers into compact space making all the spices accessible.
