STUDIO Charette II Reflection

In class we dismantled a standard household kettle. We discovered that the incredibly complex design was compiled of a many little pieces. This was confronting as it led us to consider the extensive amount of manufacturing required to produce the individual moulded parts. Our task was to analyse the kettle and make suggestions regarding the manufacture of the kettle and it's use.

We brainstormed various approaches that involved minimalisation of the manufacture process and maximisation of the lifespan of the product in use. It was interesting to observe kettle evolve into a more reasonable product facilitated through simple ideas that did not sacrifice functionality and aesthetics. In hindsight it raised questions for me about why the company responsible for the manufacture of this product used such methods in the first place. Although further research and understanding would have to be conducted to reach sound solutions, it seems like the design of the original kettle was vastly more complicated than necessary and had an apparent disregard for the trend towards more sustainable and innovative design processes.

Our final design addressed manufacturing processes the most. As I said before, disassembly of the kettle revealed a multitude of small plastic mouldings. With an understanding of the kind of processes involved with injection moulding, we took an approach that minimalised the need for a lot of this. The handle, base of the kettle (which houses the element and other electrical components) and the top (which incorporates the flip lid) were all consolidated into one polypropylene part that is moulded as 2 halves with a vertical part line running down the handle. The two halves formed around the spun steel body. This dramatically reduced the amount of small individually molded parts that made up the kettle. This saves a huge amount of energy required for manufacturing processes as well as money required for tooling and production. We also believe that it would add strength and robustness to the design which will in turn increase lifespan.

The following are some data infographs that were derived from the greenfly design website for product impact analysis. We entered the data from the original kettle followed the hypothetical yet calculated data from our suggested redesign to see how much the impact is reduced.