Product Innovation

Small Kitchen Appliance

Invent a new small kitchen appliance.

Current kitchen trends revolve around style, high-end and high-tech.

1. Style trends include people covering their oven and refrigerator with the identical cabinetry to camouflage their whole kitchen.

2. High-end trends include people wanting restaurant grade appliances in their kitchen.

3. High-tech trends include appliances being multifunctional and having the technology to serve more than one purpose.

Looking at the current kitchen and what current small appliances allow peole to do, there is an opportunity for an appliance that will cool things quickly. Right now, there is an appliance that heats things slowly (Oven), and heat thinks quickly (Microwave). There is something to cool things slowly (Freezer), but there isn’t anything that cools things quicker than 30 minutes.

What happens when you want to ice cupcakes right away but can’t because they’re too hot? What happens when friends come over and you forgot to chill the wine? If you put anything in the freezer, it takes at least 30 minutes for it to cool completely.

Challenge:

Current Kitchen:

Opportunity:

Shrinking the freezer would work exactly like a freezer. Cool air circulates through the interior walls by a set of fans. When warm food or drink needs to be cooled, this cycle will suck the hot air out and blow cool air in. Exactly like a freezer, except smaller:

Shrink the Freezer:

Feasibility:

Looked at the cooling process first. How are buildings cooled in the desert? What about air conditioning?

Flash freezing is one of the most efficient ways to cool things quickly, but that involves liquid nitrogen and dry ice.

The freezer doesn’t cool things quick enough, but what if there was a smaller version of the freezer?

CoolingProcess

CoolingFast

Shrinkthe

Freezer

Heelo, The Cold Conductor

It’s a language based name that is from the Spanish word “Hielo” which means ‘ice’ ‘frost’ or ‘frozen’. By changing the spelling to a more phonetic structure, pronunciation errors are avoided. The unique spelling also allows for own-ability and the domain name is currently not active.

Name:

Design:

Interface:

Heelo would be built into the counter with a stainless steel door that pushes open. The interface would work exactly like an iPhone, where each button opens a new menu.

The green buttons represent the “Standby” mode. This is the mode that Heelo would be running on all the time and would be used to cool things quickly (cupcakes, drinks, etc.). The blue buttons represent the “Drawdown” mode. This mode would freeze things quickly (i.e. the safe way to flash freeze leftovers to keep them fresh).