Assist with the development of an automated pressure cooker, creating a conceptual vision for the product which required a particular focus on the method of ingredient deployment.

So this design could really flourish, we needed to make sure we had deep understanding of the connection between the product and people who will use it.

A variety of methods were considered to enable individual ingredients to be added to the cooking bowl at different times during the program. These ideas were produced in the form of schematic sketches to allow us to explore a wide range of ideas quickly and to encourage a dynamic workflow between ourselves and our client.

 Alongside the functional development, conceptual images were produced to explore the form of the complete product.

Automatic pressure cookers are available and can cook at varying temperatures and pressures, but ingredients need to be manually added at the correct times, making these quite labour intensive.

It was this clear gap in the market which helped our design process to focus on creating a reliable and repeatable mechanism for independently adding ingredients during the cooking process.

Our initial prototypes were simplified, such as using a bike pump and a plastic bottle to simulate the pressuring effect of ejecting pods. These simple solutions were built on over time.

Particular expertise were required for certain custom parts such as the cooking bowl, and flexible ingredients pods. 4D worked alongside our partner electronics company to develop a fully functional prototype featuring a sophisticated electronics user interface allowing the recipe programmes to be customized.

The success of Cuisine Machine is down to the way we tapped into automation and created a truly automated process for cooking, which was a big challenge, as the containers needed to have a none stick surface and be soft enough to easily invert and inject the ingredients.

Unlike many other solutions, Cuisine Machine is truly automatic and can be set up by the user, who can walk away and come back to a fully cooked meal.