Comments on: The Frankfurt Kitchen

By: The Evolution Of The Kitchen - From Val's Kitchen : From Val's Kitchen

The Evolution Of The Kitchen - From Val's Kitchen : From Val's Kitchen — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:00:49 +0000

[…] the elderly and disabled users to ensure 100% safety and satisfaction. Following the creation of the Frankfurt kitchen in 1926, the fitted kitchen has become a fiercely competitive area of interior manufacture. Soft […]

By: Drew

Drew — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:33:31 +0000

This really brings to life on of the challenges faced by people (like me) when developing a site map. I have my way of organising things and I can use card sorting to test that against users to see if I’m getting it right, but really I’d love for users to choose their own taxonomy to allow for a more personal experience.
However, this is not practical for an information space that a users does not visit regularly nor has the time to do.
I empathise with Lihotzky and make similar mistakes at times when I’m unfamiliar with the information environment, but getting people to test it shows itself to be one of the best ways to make sure you’re on the right track. I guess the point is that you can’t design in isolation, unless you’re designing for yourself.

By: Johan Strandell

Johan Strandell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:42:46 +0000

Forgot to mention that there is some more information about this on Wikipedia:
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svensk_kÃ¶ksstandard (in Swedish, but there are some diagrams and photographs)

As well as the Architecture museum:
http://www.arkitekturmuseet.se/ung/utstallning/modernismen/english/40_t2.html

By: Johan Strandell

Johan Strandell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:19:00 +0000

Similar research was done in Sweden during the 1950:s, but in that case I think the results are actually pretty good – they developed standard sizes for various things, decided that everything (stove/sink/work surface) should be the same height and without gaps, optimised tasks such as moving things from the stove to the sink (and vice versa), etc.

Many of the kitchens built during that time even have similar bins as those in your post, but unmarked and in plastic so that you can see what’s in them. (And also placed above the workbench, so that it’s close to hand when cooking.)

In my experience, kitchens built according to those norms actually work better than those that aren’t – remodelling your kitchen is something of a modern national obsession in Sweden, and in many cases the results do look good, but are worse than the old kitchens when cooking.

There might be a parallel here to things like redesigning fundamental UI controls like scrollbars: it’s easy to make something more visually appealing than the existing ones, but it’s just as easy to make it work a lot worse for many common tasks, unless you’ve spent a lot of time figuring out all the small pieces.

(P.S. The movie is actually Swedish. :)

By: Danny Hope

Danny Hope — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 11:28:34 +0000

Maybe you could organise a screening of kitchen stories for UX Brighton in November :)