SLIDE
A lobor saving kettle
Carrying a kettle around could be a tough task for those who has less forearm strength. By adopting a sliding handle, user can hold the kettle either at the top or sideways. we no longer need to suffer from carrying hot water from kitchen to living room.
Top Handle
Side Handle
Exploration of "Visual Lightness"
Since I want to come up with an labor saving design, the overall profile tried to convey a sense of light as well. Therefore, I embodied it with certain extent of "tend of momentum".
The look and feel of a product is so important that even the slightest change of curvature would result in vast change of overall feeling. Therefore lots of profiles with subtle curvature variations are explored to find the best balance between form and function.
Angle of parting line also makes a difference
Top position will greatly reduce muscle strength required for carrying around, as the center of mass will be right under users' lifting point, length of horizontal arm of force is greatly reduced.
Side position on the contrary, increases the length of arm force, since the holding position is far away from kettle's center of mass.
Design for manufacturing
Prior to concept development, a in depth electronic kettle tear down was conducted. Reverse engineering was accomplished and BOM was created to ensure that I had the right understanding of the underlying mechanism and manufacturing process.
While most part made out of plastic was injection molded, main body is typically punch pressed out of steel or aluminum sheets, which sets limitation for the overall form of the body if the design were to adopt same solution. Hence, for the main body, concave shapes were eliminated and a standard and simple form is preferred.
the aluminum sheet will be pressed into an half ellipsoid, then trimmed with an angle.
