Cookie - by Bosch

IOT | Omnipresent | Smart Cooking | Artificial Intelligence

India is the home of about 1.39 billion humans, with various talents, jobs and responsibilities. However, in 2020 we all were a part of one of the most unexpected Pandemics that forced each one of us to stay indoors and not step out at all. While food is one of the most basic necessities, there are still many who are not the best at cooking and depend on other sources such as office canteen, tiffin as well as one cook for the entire family. After doing extensive research I realised that people struggle while cooking, managing work from home as well as household chores, multi-tasking, and many more. The idea is to design an IoT based solution that can complement the world’s finest appliance brand Bosch to make their Cooking Range smart and cooking a hassle-free experience.

Project background

Kitchen is the heart of every household. However each day we face multiple problems within our kitchen ecosystem without being able to find an apt solution for multiple tasks. The problems are different for family and bachelors. The idea is to identify the scope of designing smart products that would be able to make the existing Bosch kitchen non smart appliances smarter and help people in their day to day activity.

Design Process

Research

Analyse

Ideate

Design

Secondary research

Bosch

Bosch as a company is a pioneer in tech and has been in the market since 1886 while helping people every day with its premium range of products and services. With its motto of Inventing for life, it has been creating some of the world’s finest products with highly intuitive user experience and premium customer support. They are constantly expanding their horizons by diving deep into technology, having a world-class R&D team as well as fully equipped labs and some of the best minds working towards decoding tomorrow.

Business model

Understanding the Revenue model

I started my project by diving deep into the history of Bosch. In India, Bosch is a leading supplier of technology and services in the areas of Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. Additionally, Bosch has, in India, the largest development centre outside Germany, for an end to end engineering and technology solutions.
In 2011, the rising purchasing power of Indian consumers and their changing mindset toward high quality branded products had attracted German conglomerate, Bosch, to enter India with its premium range of home appliances. Bosch is very well established in many parts of the world, however, in India Bosch is a premium brand and not many people can afford its products. Hence the idea is to be able to design a product that complements Bosch’s existing appliances and would encourage people to invest in more products and services in a periodic manner. After extensive research about the company and its offerings, here are some of the key findings of the business opportunities Bosch has in India.

User Research

I further went ahead to understand some of the most common problems faced by people in Indian Kitchens. The data received from over 120+ households in one and two tier cities and after doing an extensive secondary research I found out that Kitchen is the heart of most of the households with about 86% of the people having a fully functional kitchen with all the equipment and they cook on a daily basis. For the rest of the 14% of the people they either depend on other sources for food or do not have a fully functional kitchen at home and use very basic equipments for emergency cooking. With Pandemic everyone was forced to stay indoors and not depend on house help, tiffins and restraunts for food which eventually forced them to indulge into basic cooking at home. After speaking with almost 200 people I realised that 32% of them were cooking for the first time due to the lockdown. The number of internet users and social media influencers increased drastically and more number of people started following recipes on platforms like Youtube, Pinterest, Instagam and so on. More people started spending time watching Netflix, Prime and other OTT platforms and there was a drastic increase in the number of Internet users.

User research

Based on the data received from various sources the problem can easily be defined as a wicked problem without being able to solve it with one point solution. Clearly problems are as diverse as the cultures of India and with multiple motivations and scenarios we will be targeting a segment of users for our digital solution

User Segmentation & their story

Bachelors

Working Professionals

Family

Elderly people

Rohit lives alone and has been working from home

Rohit works from home and
manages his chores himself

He went to kitchen during his lunch break to make some quick lunch for himself.

He has a meeting at 2 PM
and went back to work while
his food was being prepared

His meeting went for a really long and he forgot about his food, due to which he burnt his lunch.

A Family’s journey while multi-tasking at home

Radha lives in with her family of four and is the only one who cooks for the family.

She keeps food to cook and
goes away to help her kids
with their homework

She spends time with her baby while the food is in the pressure cooker in the kitchen.

She lost count of the cooker
whistles and realised that
the food is burnt while away.

A grandmother with health issues due to age

Dadima loves to cook rajma rice for her grandchildren and pampering them with her secret recipies

However, she has been going through a lot of health issues and is advised to not stand

She spends most of her time watching television and reading books to pass her time

She misses cooking for her
family and wants to still
enjoy cooking for them

Problems faced in the Kitchen

Multi- tasking

Most working people complained about having no time for cooking, household chores and multi-tasking. Families with more number of people demands special menu and it gets very hectic for the cook to manage everything.

New cooks

New cooks were clueless about where to find easy recipes as there were way too many options. They have multiple sources to find tutorials but they often mess up while cooking.

Work from home

While people were working from home, it was getting difficult to manage kitchen in summers while being on long calls, hence some people would often skip meals which effected their health.

Age factor

Many elderly people are unable to cook due to their health issues. They however are a treasure of recipes and would want to indulge in cooking.

Define

Problem Statement

So what did I find?

Pandemic got along a lot of unwanted stress and trauma to many people. The routines changed and so did the infrastructure requirements. Let’s be real not everyone can afford Bosch products and use technology-based products. However, we realised these were just some roadblocks but they wouldn’t be big enough for us to not find a user-friendly and adaptable solution. With companies announcing permanent work from home to people becoming influencers many people would choose to stay indoors and bring both professional as well as personal life under one roof. The idea is to design a product that can make people’s life easy and not be too difficult to use.

Ideate

Strategy Design

After Ideation, I narrowed down on introducing a cost-effective device that can complement any of the existing kitchen appliances at home. Bosch launched its own home application and a number of smart products for houses as well as offices in the USA. However many Indians prefer purchasing relatively low-cost products which are often upgraded in about 5–10 years.

A pressure cooker is one of the most important cooking equipment in every household in India. It was commonly observed that many people forget the count of the whistle while cooking food. Whereas Pressure cookers are very rare in USA and UK. The idea is to introduce IoT technology that could help us monitor our kitchen from anywhere in the house or even outside the house

Technology

With the boom in the internet industry, we are overloaded with platforms that promise us some of the best recipes and cooking solutions. However, this gets very overwhelming for new cooks and ends up taking a lot of time browsing and choosing the best platform as well as the recipe.

The idea is to have an AI-optimised platform that would make recipes intuitive and personalised. Most of the family members from children to the elderly at home watch TV and are well aware of how a TV remote works. Most of them do not have smartphones and laptops which makes it difficult for them to use mobile apps. Hence to optimise the solution for television by integrating the app onto FireStick, Apple TV and Android TV.