HCI Midterm Report CookTool – The smart kitchen 10/29/2010 University of Oslo Gautier DOUBLET – ghdouble Marine MATHIEU - mgmathie

CookTool – Gautier DOUBLET & Marine MATHIEU

HCI 2010 Page 2 on 10

Summary I. Agree on our goals (usability, experience and others) .................................................................... 3

II. Data collection and analysis ............................................................................................................ 4

III. Evaluation of our idea ................................................................................................................. 6

IV. Alternatives & prototypes ........................................................................................................... 7

1. Multitouch interface ................................................................................................................... 7

2. Computer interface ..................................................................................................................... 7

3. Vocal interface ............................................................................................................................. 8

V. Evaluation of the prototypes and final decision ............................................................................. 8

VI. Literature collection .................................................................................................................... 9

CookTool – Gautier DOUBLET & Marine MATHIEU

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I. Agree on our goals (usability, experience and others)

In order to find the users groups, we have based our users search on finding the users of a kitchen,

but also the users of technology. By crossing these two groups and adding users who need more

efficiency because they don’t have the time to spend hours for cooking, we finally get two main

groups we would like to focus on:

Teenagers who are “connected” and who start to cook by themselves at home. They don’t

want to leave their MP3 player or they run between the TV and the pans every minute.

Adults, men and women, who have their personal kitchen at home, who spend enough time

in the kitchen to deserve a better experience than the extractor hood noise or the micro-

wave ringing. They probably like listening to music, hearing the news, finding a new recipe

and piloting all kitchen equipments like a conductor during a great concert.

As everyday users of technology and safety-concerned persons, users need the product to meet these requirements:

Easy to use, easy to remember,

Connectivity,

Not usable by kids,

At-a-glance manageable.

So, to match these needs, we have chosen the most important characteristics our product must

have:

Tablet, integrable into a kitchen near the cooking plates.

Small, around the size of an adult stretched hand, so that it is easily integrable.

Connected to Internet, with a web interface and synchronized to a smartphone so that you

can pre-heat the oven or make sure everything’s fine.

Capacitive screen technology, which reacts very well and only to human contact, and not to

kitchen accessories.

Hand-size recognition to prevent its use by children; possibility to unlock it remotely with the

web interface or the smartphone interface.

Connected to the cooking plates, the microwave oven, the oven and the extraction hood

(number of them is manageable); and possibility to add functionalities like coffee-maker

timer.

Use of icons, so it’s visual and you can see quite fast if something is on.

Multi-tasks.

Virtual keyboard, to annotate and write recipes; stylus would be the best, but stylus on

capacitive screens are not satisfying now (you can’t write well with them).

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II. Data collection and analysis In order to collect data from users, we made an online survey we promoted via our blog, Facebook

and Twitter. You can see the results below.

If you answer other to the previous question, what do you do ? Talk on the phone

CookTool – Gautier DOUBLET & Marine MATHIEU

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These results are interesting because here we are providing two functionalities that are not so

different because both can be seen as very convenient. But if you look at the result, the first one is

rejected by people whereas the other one is approved with a huge majority. So we have looked to

the differences and it appears that the first one is “active”, you turn something on which is going to

start running with you, contrary to the other one, which is “passive”, you just have access to some

information but you control everything. So we can deduce that people let the technology to help

them but they absolutely want to keep control over things.

Besides, this result shows that people are heavily

concerned with safety. It explains the previous results

which are that they don’t want to let a computer to

manage dangerous things as a oven without

controlling it.

Here we can see that the results are

distributed between the three answers so, as

it is never possible to make everyone happy,

we deduced that there is no big mistake.

Here we have a kind of confirmation of our

deduction because we see that most of the

people like what we have planed, even if they

don’t use all of them every day.

CookTool – Gautier DOUBLET & Marine MATHIEU

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People all agree to say that nowadays smartphones synchronization is at least useful, or else

essential. A huge majority finally feels that bringing technology in the kitchen would make their

cooking experience nicer.

III. Evaluation of our idea

The data collected reveal a great interest in this kind of kitchen control panel because, as we had

assumed, many people used to do a lot of things while they are cooking. So that, by making their

activities easier, it would make their cooking experience better and safer.

Very few people want less functionality and some want more. But as it was an Internet questionnaire

that we’ve promoted to our friends, people who answered are like us very interested in new

technologies, so we can deduce that the average people get what they want with the functionalities

we’ve chosen.

People would love a connected kitchen and some applications as the synchronization of their cooking

list on their smartphone had a great success. Nevertheless, it appears that even if computers make

their life better, people don’t have an entire trust about them, so they suggest us to think of

integrating a manual command that can supply the computer if bugs occur or in case of emergency.

People like almost all the prototype we planned, except one or two things, so we can say that we

have planned quite well the needs of users, and we are going to improve it by listening to users’

recommendations to make a prototype that really meets users’ expectations.

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IV. Alternatives & prototypes

1. Multitouch interface

This interface is very similar to a smartphone one so very intuitive and people already know how to

use it. The menus are accessible directly in the 1st page and multimedia functionalities easily

accessible in another interface you can slide down and up to open and hide it. Security is performed

via hand-size recognition.

2. Computer interface

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It allows users to not make any changes in their kitchen, but provide distance-management thanks to

domotic plugs. The security is performed via password.

3. Vocal interface

If you have dirty hands or you are holding something you can control your kitchen with your voice.

You switch between the different screens by vocal command or with little buttons. The security is

performed via vocal recognition.

V. Evaluation of the prototypes and final decision The computer interface needs a computer in the kitchen and the use of clean and precise hands. To

be efficient you’ll need 2 hands to type on the keyboard and go and find your windows with the

touch pad is not very quick and convenient.

The vocal interface can be annoying by speaking each time you should be warned of something (hot

oven, end of cooking time, etc.). You also need to memorize all the vocal commands used in the

interface management. Besides you have to record the voice of every people who may you the

kitchen.

Whereas the multitouch interface is efficient, you only need one hand to use it. The hand-size

recognition allows you to register a minimum size to prevent kids from using dangerous materials but

not every hand in the family. You can easily switch between fun and cooking functionalities. The

interface is very simple and each functionality is accessible in the 1st page. So with 1 click you get into

its parameters and with another click to go back.

That’s why we have chosen to go on working with the multitouch interface because it is well adapted

to an efficient cooking use. But, according to suggestions we had in our survey, we plan to integrate

very few vocal commands as an alternative if you can’t use your hands.

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VI. Literature collection

Sociable Kitchen: Interactive Recipe System in Kitchen Island (International Journal of

Smart Home Vol.3, No.2, April, 2009)

This article brings the idea that we don’t only have to create technological functionalities to improve

cooking activities, but we have to pay attention to social interactions in the kitchen and focus on

developing functionalities that increase the share of emotions and the communication between

people.

http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJSH/vol3_no2_2009/3.pdf

Touch Gesture Reference Guide by LukeW

LukeW is an internationally recognized digital product design who has written many articles about

human interaction, web design but also mobile and multitouch design. This guide is a reference of

every kind of gestures which can be used on a multitouch interface. So we’ll take inspiration of that

in order to create the best navigation menus as possible.

http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1071

Smart home hacks by Gordon Meyer Chap. Kitchen and Bath

This book of 2005 shows that it has been quite long time that people have started thinking about the

way of making a house smart. In this book you’ll find some tips and DIY way of making your home

smarter with the technologies of 2005. So, from now, it is interesting to see their try, and their

reflexion about all the functionalities that can be useful and make people’s cooking experience nicer.

A lot of these ideas can be taken again and we’ll think of adding them in an “improving list” for our

prototype.

http://books.google.com/books?id=fQAP70CmY-

0C&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr#v=onepage&q&f=false

Today's "Kitchen of Tomorrow" by Paul Lukas

This article is about an interesting reflexion that shows that in the 50s people have imagined crazy

technologicalcooking stuff and kitchen things for their time, but now we have enough skill in

technology, none of them have been created for real, contrary to planes, cars or computers fields

which have developed amazing capabilities.It also shows that the important thing is that, no matter

what technology we can create, its first goal is to preveserve the domestic values. It is another kind

of approach and will remind us to not create functionalities that separate people but which bring to

family together.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/next-kitchen.html

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Maison A studio B (a showroom house in Paris)

Its website and all the articles about that house are in French, but we thought that it was really

interesting because it is a real showroom which can be visited in Paris where all the actual smart

home technologies have been installed and can be tested by people. In the kitchen you have a screen

where people can login on a website and control the electric system. This system also provides visitor

identification and a fingerprint reader. This article is a state of the art of the existing technologies and

how we can integrate them in a real house. So, it’s up to us to improve it and propose a better

multitouch interface.

http://www.avivre.net/maisonAstudioB/diapoCuis.shtml

http://www.avivre.net/maisonAstudioB/images/presseweb/home.pdf

Other projects and prototypes

QOOQ tablet http://www.redferret.net/?p=16792

iCEBOX http://www.appliancist.com/accessories/beyond-smart-kitchen-icebox.html Eco-Intelligent Kitchen http://trendsupdates.com/eco-intelligent-kitchen-is-eco-riendly-and-includes-garden/