Kettle 01 - The Market

Kettle Project : The Market  Teardown  History  Aesthetics  Process  Concepts  Costing  Induction

My next few blog posts will be an in detailed account of an entire design project. My focus is two fold: my mission is to get in-depth with the question What is the cost of good design? and also to work through a project, via the blog, in depth to the conclusion.

In continuation of my previous post, i'm going further down the rabbit hole into the kettle market. My intention is to investigate, design, and cost the humble kettle, a process which will hopefully reveal insights into the wider consumer products industry. My main aim is not to 'reinvent' the kettle by coming up with a world of delightful future-spec, premium price innovations, but to get close to the realities of the market as it is, and to see if or how we can use the domain of the 'industrial designer' to make small, deliverable changes to a very cheap machine.

Kettles are one of the simplest kitchen appliances around, with no necessary mechanical parts, just an input, a receptacle and an element. Due to it's lack of mechanical parts, the arguments for 'quality' in the design become reduced, as the prime experience or function of the product cannot really be enhanced with better components. This makes it a challenging, restrictive environment for practical industrial design, but also an extreme example when investigating product costing.

I will first be investigating the market, performance, and functionality of at least one kettle, before attempting to discover what necessary (functional) and fluid (shape & form) parts I have control over, and how I can utilise this to deliver either better, cheaper design, or find out to what extent cost is at the expense of 'good'. This will be over a few blog posts, and we begin by investigating the market as a whole.

Buying

My on-site research began at Sainsburys, where I was greeted by a dizzying array of different styles.

Well, what appears to be a dizzying array, but when you look at the offerings in detail, their is only actually about 5 or 6 actual models, which come in mildly different materials and forms, with prices selected at random. I got some prices and images from argos.com, for illustration:

Source:Argos.com

There are more variations than this available on the UK market, but most designs are highly formulaic. The 'range' you perceive is just minor form and materials adjustment. Looking at the four examples above, all of the functional elements: lid, spout, switch, base, handle; are positioned in exactly the same place on each line. This hegemony of form is even more apparent when viewing the 'secret' undersides of the machines, which are uncannily similar.

This isn't an example of perfect function being arrived upon through evolution, each manufacturer brand has just taken the stock image and warped it a little, sent it off to China, then priced it according to their own perceived brand value. This kind of destroys the image we have of industrial design as students, where form and function grow as one.

In fact, there are only two main manufacturers of kettle controls and connectors - basically all of the performance-essential elements - Strix and Otter. And both are descended from the same family. They supply the units which connect to the mains, the switches, the lights and the thermostats and cut-offs. Not only that, but both offer 'engineering and manufacturing services' which means that the design and engineering process for a brand like delonghi or morphy richard boils down to consulting a shopping list from either supplier, and slightly adjusting the form to fit the brief. This is even the case for alessi, who, despite the £160 price tag, use the same Strix functional components as everyone else.

Strix even have a catalogue of base designs, so enterprising design engineering managers or brand buyers can simply select a template and go.

What I'm looking for is a really cheap kettle, so I can investigate this example of maximum cost-efficiency. Sainsbury's cheapest full-size option was £9.60, about right for a white plastic model with a 360 base, but we could go cheaper.

I found what I was looking for in Wilko, a £5 basic, basic (functional :) ) model, at a mere five pounds sterling.

And so the fun begins.

Design Analasys.

As with the ultra-cheap mobile phone I introduced in the last blog post, the functional kettle is one of seductive innocence and minimalism.

Overall, I was actually surprised by it's lack of ugliness. The one advertised on the website has a vague, ugly and more 'fluid' form. It must have been silently replaced recently by this more geometric example.

The base came inside the kettle, which is a good way of reducing overall packaging space, an important factor for efficient shipping at the bottom of the market.

The hinge is very cheaply made with a simple snap-fit hinge, which I assume will wear away relatively easily. The use of exposed phillips screws is ... endearingly honest? 

The base is a very simple affair, composed mainly from one single plastic moulding. The 'pegs' are probably part of the moulding process, but can hold some of the length of the cord in as a simple way of adjusting it's length.

The base of the kettle is flat, and with the electronics semi-exposed, not reassuringly watertight. Again, the join lines and screws, which in premium models are usually covered by rubber feet and intricate joints are ... laid bare, encouraging an honest dialogue with the user.

Inside, we have an old-fasioned immersible heating element, unlike the cleaner flat-bottomed heating elements on more expensive kettles. Also notice what passes for a 'filter' at the spout is actualy just several holes moulded through a rather shakily mounted bit of plastic.

And here we are, as I mentioned before, Strix are supplying the brains of the machine. Three covered ports on this base of affix to the three prongs on the underside of the main kettle.

In terms of industrial design, the kettle is a simple affair. The hump to the rear of the device is a necessary appendage which houses the connections and switchgear. The handle and body are vaguely geometric, but the whole body has a carefully masked taper from top to bottom. The window is only on one side, to cut costs.

Performance

In order to assess the performance of this machine, and see how bad it really is, we can compare it to my family's current kettle, a morphy richards stainless steel equivalent to those that cost around £30 today.

As well as the stainless steel exterior, and slightly more 'stylish' design, a key difference is that this kettle is one of the flat-bottomed variety, which is typically cleaner, and means that water can be boiled at any level without a necessary minimum, as immersed kettles require.

And obviuosly, being several years old, one must comment on the condition of the machine. On the interior, it is interesting to see the effects of years of use. We live in a soft-water area so limescale isn't a major problem, but the stainless interior of the kettle has been more than slightly tarnished. Also note the condition of the plastic seal around the window.

On the exterior, an eye catching issue is all the white sediment of the edges. This is actually where my ever-enterprising mother fixed leaks using white liquid sealant. The causes of the leaks? Boundaries in the stainless steel which have not stood the test of time. This is actaully a problem because of the use of a premium material and not despite it, as the steel-on-steel join at the spout cannot be as effectively joined compared to plastic-on-plastic. The plastic-on-steel interface at the window join is also another obvious problem, as both would expand at different rates at high temperature, hence, I think, the rather massive seal.

Swiftly onto the big test:

As we can see, although it has had years of use, the morphy richards comes through with a marginal win, although a very marginal one at that. This is mainly down to the power rating, which is 3000W compared to the basic's 2200W, although even at full efficiency, that power difference should be leading to a more significant lead than 14 seconds. This can only partially be put down to age, as it doesn't really rely on moving, wearing parts.

Another thing to note is that the stainless steel model was noticably louder. This will be because the flat-bottomed design requires more vigorous internal convection, and because the steel body doesn't dampen sound in the same way as wobbly PolyPropelene.

It seems then that the immersed element is quieter, and more efficient at heating water. However, it has clear usability drawbacks, being exposed, requiring full immersion, and being hard to clean.

***

The kettle has now been stationed in the house for about a month, and despite initial horror at the idea of using the cheapo white plastic monstrosity, comments about it's perceived ugliness faded quickly, and the kettle became a welcome and established part of the scenery. In fact, my mother grew rather fond of it, naming it 'Kevin'. 

It does have a certain charm about it, and I think it benefits from it's cheapness: Errors are forgiven quickly, as the kettle didn't promise anything to begin with. Each complete user experience is seen as a bonus, rather than an expectation. In the end, the problem with bad user interaction isn't the missed functionality, it's the resulting annoyance in the users mind.

In the end, the kettle is fine. It does exactly what is asked, when asked, and is never in the user's way. What we have done here, although rather academic, is to reduce the concept of a certain consumer product to it's minimum, away from the middle-ground of design-for-marketing, and even further from the lofty heights of 'Good Design'. The question now is, is there any appropriate way to build it back up in order to derive a design that delivers academic 'Good Design' and further function at a low price? 

The next post will be an exploration of the very details of this kettle, in order to understand the exact function and methods of production.