Background

A kitchen is a room in a house with appliances for cooking, a sink with running water for washing food and dishes, a refrigerator and pantry for food storage, and a plethora of pots and pans, cutlery and crockery, kitchen utensils, instruments, and gadgets to assist the cook. It can be helpful to think of the kitchen as a system within a household.
A smart electronic device is a useful instrument, machine, or gadget that is controlled by electronic circuitry microcontroller boards, or sometimes by a single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi. Smart electronic devices are computers that perform only a few limited functions. A smart kitchen is one where some of the kitchen appliances are connected electronically to each other or to other utensils or devices. For example, a stove may be connected electronically to a pot so that the cook will set the temperature of the water in the pot, and the stove and pot will communicate with each other to regulate the temperature precisely. Any function of the kitchen system, such as the storage of food, food preparation, cooking, the disposal of waste, and the cleaning and maintenance of the kitchen, can be made smart by employing electronic circuitry or microcontroller boards. The goal is to provide us with useful functions or information in order to increase our well-being.
 

The design brief

Design a practical and useful smart kitchen to replace your kitchen at home one day in future, whose goal should be to improve the quality of life of the whole family. Consider how the various parts of your smart kitchen work together, and how they can help your family make good decisions about your health, nutrition, financial budget, energy consumption, sustainability, and local economy when procuring, preparing, cooking, and storing food. Think also about how your smart kitchen can bring your family together and help you when socialising with friends. Build a small-scale model of your smart kitchen to demonstrate your design concept to your fellow students and teachers. Alternatively, you may build a computer-aided design (CAD) model of your design concept, if you prefer. Work on this project in a small team with a group of your classmates.
 

The design thinking process

​​​​​​​Follow the six stages of the design thinking process to ensure that you are thorough and do everything necessary to succeed in your design project. First, you endeavour to understand the design topic and EMPATHISE with the needs of the users. With that understanding, you can DEFINE what is essential to the product or system that you are designing. Then you IDEATE, that is, you creatively come up with ideas and develop them. The next step is to PROTOTYPE your chosen design solution in a physical form and improve it through trial-and-error. Then you TEST your design idea to elicit the opinions of users. And finally, at the end of the process, you REFLECT upon your project to benefit from the experience. Use the appropriate methods from the Design Thinking for Schools website as you proceed along the design thinking process.
 

Note for teachers

Undertaking a student design project using electrical parts or microcontrollers such as Arduino requires:

• teachers who are able to supervise such a project;
• laboratories or workshops with electrical and electronic parts and tools;
• ​​​​​​​and students who are trained to work with electricity, tools, and equipment.

Read the guide for teachers on Safety for the PROTOTYPE Stage for Level IV to safely supervise this design project.