American student’s recipe generator is a finalist in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition.
Sook, a wireless kitchen assistant concept generates, displays and shares recipes, bringing social networking into the kitchen.
The appliance is one of nine finalists out of more than 600 entries from 49 countries in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition.This year, the sixth year of the global contest, undergraduate and graduate industrial design students were invited to create appliance concepts for the Internet generation.
“In my research, I found that 97% of the iGeneration owns a computer and 75% are on Facebook or other social networking sites,” says the device’s creator, Adam Brodowski, a design student at Savannah College of Art and Design in the U.S. state of Georgia. “I also found that they are all hypertaskers who do multiple things all at once. Eating dinner, text messaging, doing homework and watching TV are all strung together.
“They are also very comfortable with technology and the Internet. They run personal blogs, surf the web all day long, email back and forth and so on. Most importantly, they enjoy creating content to fuel the web and be noticed.”
Sook uses a series of sensors to detect what food is on, or near, its cutting board. In addition to measuring weight and moisture, Sook also has an electronic tongue that digitizes tastes and analyzes them so that the ingredients can be combined in a pleasing way.
Each item is added to a recipe being built on the screen. As a recipe is being generated or used, the user can rearrange it, add spices, start timers and look up ingredients. When preparation is completed, the unit can photograph the dish and upload it, along with the recipe, to a social networking site for others to use. The entire unit is waterproof so it can be washed in the sink like a plate.
