DESIGN - easy-clean colander
for northwestern’s human-centered product design course, my 4-person team was tasked with finding and solving any problem we desired.
after surveying 100 people’s most pressing problems, we selected the one we thought had the biggest space for improvement: making a colander that was easy to clean.
research
1. ease of cleaning
2. quickness of straining
3. ability to hold smaller foods (like rice)
and that the biggest current issues are:
- time spent cleaning
- sponges getting shredded by metal during cleaning
- not trusting that the colander is 100% residue-free even after cleaning
from testing, we found that users generally preferred:
- large holes (but not so large that food falls through)
- flexible material like silicone
ideation & mockups
the kirigami: another idea drew inspiration from kirigami, a japanese art form consisting of cutting and folding paper to create 3D designs. we made a design using onshape, then laser-printed it onto a silicone bowl lid. however, this design didn’t produce the spiral shape we intended, and the stretchy material widened the holes so much that food slipped through.
the quartered colander: for a third idea, we 3d printed a separable colander, where the holes for draining are located at the interfaces where the pieces come together. this would allow for easier access to the holes for cleaning when the colander is disassembled.
however, we realized that this geometry would make it too difficult to assemble the colander, since all four quadrants must be lined up and assembled at the same time.
the orange slice colander: building off the idea of a separable colander, we used CAD to mock up a bowl that was easier to assemble, imitating the geometry of assembling orange slices to make a sphere.