Kohler Tyne Faucet
Design a transitional style pulldown kitchen faucet to directly compete with leading brands.
My Role
Industrial Design; 3D Design.
Tools
Paper and pen, Solidworks, Alias, Keyshot, 3D printing.
Timeline
Eight Months
Introduction
In this project, I worked with a principal designer to design a transitional style kitchen faucet for Kohler to compete with leading brands. I strongly contributed to every design steps from research to production. I also collaborated with engineering and human factor team to ensure the usability and producibility of our design.
With clean lines, the Tyne kitchen faucet we designed is durable to use, easy to clean, and a beautifully simple addition to nearly any decor.
The Challenges and Solutions
The Challenges
Kohler, the global leader in the manufacture of kitchen and bath products, turned to Deap Design to design a transitional style pulldown kitchen faucet to compete with existing competitor in the retail aisle. The price point is targeted in the range of $159 to $189.
The new kitchen faucet should have:
Sturdy form to emphasize features of durability and ease of use.
Aesthetics that blend in with user’s decor.
Easy to clean geometries.
The Solutions
I worked with a principal designer from research to final production to develop a transitional style kitchen faucet that have:
Sturdy handle and form that is intuitive and durable to use.
Transitional modern barn house aesthetic that fits in with nearly any decor.
Clean lines that are easy to clean and don’t accumulate dirt.
The Process
Design Brief
Understand client expectations.
Kohler is a recognized global leader in the manufacture of kitchen and bath products, with diversity of products that lead the way in design and innovation.
Kohler turned to Deap Design to design a transitional style pulldown kitchen faucet to compete with existing competitor in the retail aisle. The price point is targeted in the range of $159 to $189.
User Research; Market Research
Work with the Kohler marketing team to understand user needs.
After communicating with Kohler marketing team, we learned three main user needs of a kitchen faucet:
1. Bulk = Value. The retail consumer correlates bulk and size to value for money and long term durability.
2. Aesthetics plays a critical role in choosing a faucet.
3. Easy to clean geometries are critical.
Competitor Analysis
Analysis competitors’ successful features.
We looked at transitional style pulldown faucets in the targeted price range to learn market standards and discover opportunities to stand out.
Project goals
Set our directions.
Basing on the research findings we defined our project goals to guide us through the rest of the design process:
Mood board; Inspirations; Style Guide
Seek style inspirations that give the sense of sturdy, clean and blend in well.
Our client expected a transitional style kitchen faucet to meet the $159 to $189 price range (opening to middle tier). With that in mind, we seeked form and style inspirations from shapes and kitchen interiors that give the sense of sturdy, clean and blend in with user’s interior. We categorized the inspirational images into three transitional styles as the style guide for our design process.
Ideation; Sketching
Explored various ideas for each of the transitional style.
With the guide of the mood board, we sketched various ideas for each transitional style we summarized. Then we picked concepts that are stronger in expressing sturdy and clean feelings, and blend in well with user’s interior, to further develop them into prototypes.
Prototyping; Usability Testing
Made lo-fi prototypes from foam, surfacing software and 3D printing techniques to discover usability issues.
We picked nine top ideas from our sketches and made prototypes from foam, surfacing software and 3D printing technique.
We had users with different hand sizes holding the spouts and using the handles to discover usability issues. We also reviewed the overall proportion of each concept with the client and the design team for space of improvement in the appearance.
Iterations
Refine the design of nine faucet concepts basing on usability test findings and technical constraints.
We received mainly two types of feedback from the human factor and engineering team. One is technical constraints that needed to be overcomed to make the faucet producible, the other is the usability feedback to facilitate a easy to use faucet.
Due to the length of this case study, I listed the iteration process of two out of the nine faucets to demonstrate how we refine our designs:
Final Design; Deliverables for production
We constantly reviewed design updates with the client. After agreeing on the final designs, we delivered detailed computer model files to engineering teams for production.
These nine faucets are not only beautiful in appearance, they also function very well in people’s home.
The result
The Tyne faucet was chosen by the client for its sturdy form, clean lines and its adaptability to nearly any decor.
With clean lines, the Tyne kitchen faucet is a beautifully simple addition to nearly any decor. The high-arching spout easily clears pots and pans while the pull-down spray head featuring Sweep spray delivers a wide, forceful spray, simplifying kitchen cleanup.
Impact
The outcome 🎉
⭐️ The Tyne faucet resulted in shelf presence at The Home Depot, a 4.7 out of 5-star customer satisfaction rating, and a 92% recommendation rating.
👍🏻 “Love this faucet!!! It really gave my kitchen an upgrade. It looks so good with all of my other stainless steel appliances.” - Home Depot Customer
🥰 “This faucet looks good and works even better. The taller goose neck gets the water up higher for washing deep pot and pans. The pull-down sprayer is great! It makes it very quick, easy rinsing the sink, washing larger items in the sink.” - Home Depot Customer
Learnings and Insights
During this project I enjoyed contributing from the beginning to finish. I practiced user and trend research, used ergonomic principle, honed 3d modeling and prototyping skill, become more knowledgeable about color, material and finish. I’m happy to see that one of the faucets is being sold at home depot. I feel satisfied about this project.
Next steps
We are discussing with Kohler about potential possibilities to develop the other eight faucets we delivered into mass production to expand their product lines.