AERI / Handheld Milk Frother

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Aeri: Handheld Milk Frother

Project Team: Aishwarya Tandon, Tan Yong Kuan, Lim Zi Jie, Vilvum Kris

Project Collaborator: NUS Division of Industrial Design

This project was pursued as a student NUS Division of Industrial Design. The main aim of the project was to redesign a common handheld product into something different from the norm.

The Product Matrix on Milk Frothers

The product matrix study is conducted to learn more about the market, and find areas that are unsaturated to develop. From this product matrix, it can be deduced that frothers which are perceived to be luxurious and serious tend to have a metallic finish, and possess geometric forms while those perceived to be fun tend to have vibrant colours or prints, and comes in forms that may deviate from geometry.

A low number of products that fall within the luxurious and fun categories, and hence, this could be a potential area for exploration.

Concept Map

After brainstroming and creating the concept map based on the user persona, it was decided that the frother should reflect the personality of the user, and should be a 'Sociable' Milk Frother. By sociable, we meant that it should be something of a fun talking piece such that people would want to talk about it and as a result, end up socializing. In the context of socializing, two important areas were recognized

- The frother should be easy to pass around

- The frother should be a talking piece (Inspired by Phillipe Starck's Juicy Salif)

Usage Analysis of common handlheld Milk Frothers

It was noticed that during use, some of the users tend to place the frother on the table flat, leading to a very unhygienic experience of using the frother.
It was also observed that when the frother is not in use, the users tend to keep it away in drawers, where it is hidden from the rest.

Passing Analysis of common handheld MIlk Frothers

It is observed that the passing of the present milk frother is very awkward and uncomfortable. Furthermore, when the users touch the whisk duringt the passing process, it is very unhygienic.

From these insights, we found a few points that can contribute to the design of a sociable milk frother:

1. Larger surface area for passing

2. More faces of the frother to grab

2. Standing frother that does not dirty the agitator when placed

After interviewing the subjects, some of them mentioned that the passing was not an important issue, as they will put the frother down on the table for another to grab, akin to salt and pepper bottles. This point contributed to our decision to focus on a standing frother instead of increasing the surface area or number of faces of the frother.

Mood Board in order to aid form exploration

The purpose of building the mood board was to create a literal and visual vocabulary to describe the intended design direction. Form semantics were studied to discover physical attributes that would evoke the intended emotional responses from users.