KitchenAid Countertop Oven Redesign

Project overview: Internal research showed our main competitors in the countertop oven category gaining more market favorability due to enhanced features, better price points, and stronger UX.

The solve: Introduce a new type of internal accessory (the Flex Pan) as a key innovator along with a new expansion of features and requirements (Dual Cooking, proper Flex Pan usage, and turning Secondary cooking modes into Primary modes).

My role: Lead design work on the new countertop oven, translating new market features into a cohesive and intuitive user experience that would overall regain market share.

⏱️ 26% decreased task time in cooking a standard meal

🧠 52% increased understanding of Flex Pan placement

📈 46% increased usage of Keep Warm as a primary mode

✅ 84% task completion of Air Frying with the Flex Pan

Product Team

Kyle - Product Manager

Annie - Product Designer

My Role

Product Designer

Dual Cooking

One of the earlier feature requirements from marketing was to explore customized cooking in two separate zones at the same time. With the No Preheat Zone (upper oven cavity situated underneath a convection fan allowing no time lost to preheating) and the Standard Zone (middle/lower cavity meant for bigger and taller food items), there’s reasoning to suggest that users with more complex meals can benefit from maxing out the entire oven cavity. By allowing dual cooking, users would have the potential to cook a full meal in a shorter timeframe, all in one appliance.

Initial Explorations

Flex Pan and Zone Differentiation

A prime area of focus was on how to best inform users on proper usage of the “Flex Pan.” As an accessory, the Flex Pan is a deeper tray with a slitted insert that allows users to cook potentially larger foods even in the upper oven cavity. This was essential for modes like Air Fry or Air Grill so users properly use the No Preheat Zone without burning their food in the upper cavity.

While the Flex Pan can technically be used in any part of the oven, it can only be used in the upper rack to air fry any specific foods. This was due to a restraint both on industrial design and budget; with the convection fan built directly above the internal cavity to allow successful air frying, food on any tray other than the Flex Pan would essentially touch the top of the oven’s cavity and the fan, causing food to burn. Placement of the fan also couldn’t be changed due to costs when moving to mass production. The challenge here was to best guide the user on when the Flex Pan can be used and its restraints without taking away flexibility on a user’s cooking preferences.

Visual aid of Flex Pan in top rack working with the convection fan for optimal air frying

Rendering of the Flex Pan and insert

Primary vs Secondary Modes

Historically speaking, primary modes on the oven pertain to the main 12 modes that can operate independently, while secondary modes operated as an add-on to a primary mode. For example, Air Fry or Bake can operate as their own mode while Keep Warm would need a mode like Air Fry to be functional. While most of these modes were predefined before my time, I noticed earlier on in competitive research that most models out on market allow their secondary modes to exist in a primary state as well.

I led the charge on keeping the standard functionality of secondary modes in new design explorations while building out the primary versions of them in tandem. By granting secondary modes the same power as primary modes, users can access key oven features at a much quicker pace, as well as more fluidly use their countertop oven in conjunction with other kitchen appliances for larger or more complex meals.

Research Insights

After some beginning iterations, we proposed a research initiative with a panel of around 20 participants. The initiative was twofold:

Card Sorting Exercise - Accessory and cavity placement preference for common cooking tasks
Prototype Test - Understanding of current HMI and accessory setup on simple task flows

Example of a participant’s card sorting answers with common foods and desired placements.

Post the initiative, 3 main points came into being.

The middle rack is seen as the universal default for consistency and safety: The middle of the oven was seen as the "safest bet" to ensure an "even cook" from the top and bottom elements. Most users discussed proper heat circulation meant needing equal space above and below their food.
Instinct and expertise outweigh suggested labels: Participants indicated that instinct and established mental models are prioritized over provided labels on optimal food placement. Even when told the Flex Pan in the top rack was the most optimal for air frying, some users had doubts they would use that position.
Users don’t see dual cooking as a necessary use case: While users would like to maximize the cavity space of their oven, most scenarios were on cooking more of the same type of food vs. two different ones. If dual cooking were actually to be implemented for a more complex meal, it would be with another kitchen appliance (grill, stovetop, etc.)

Design Post Research

After aggregating our research, the task was now on how to put user flexibility more front and center while still acknowledging the optimal use of the Flex Pan. I went back to our competitive audit and realized that a good number of appliances out at market have a convection heating feature, and if we already have convection built specifically for air frying, why can’t we apply it to more cooking modes? In this way we could not only increase user options on how best to cook their food, but we can build in optimal/suboptimal suggestions as well. My new direction focused on convection being an independent action a user can choose.

Key Takeaways

HMI design as a new frontier

In regards to general processes, designing for tangible products instead of digital ones is fairly similar. The team set up is largely the same, workflows and timelines run off of a standard 2 week sprint cycle, and your main collaborators are still mostly product managers and engineers. The key differences I found, though, were in when research pursuits are implemented and in designing for cost. There’s a huge difference when including 4 physical buttons instead of 3 or 2 push dials instead of one, and since you’re designing for mass production, these small elements can add up extremely quickly. I found it best to constantly loop in my marketing and industrial design partners to make sure any new approaches still met our budget constraints. Research as well had to be fully conducted prior to launching any new appliance to market. While the iterative design cycle still worked for the research in tow (meeting with focus groups, running tasks on prototypes for user testing, solidifying any quant data with other research partners), the idea of launching a product or a particular feature and getting user feedback in post simply was not an option. The work done on these appliances essentially has to be perfect before going on the sales floor.

Listen and rely on your research

While navigating the multiple asks or feature explorations from our stakeholders, the research I helped conduct with the rest of our team made it fairly clear that some of those features felt unnecessary. The users we interviewed were defining ‘better’ as being ‘simpler,’ and because of this there was less of a desire to explore potential new features vs. establishing more intuitive cooking flows that could easily fit into their existing mental models. I used these talking points to not only reign in our design efforts to be more relevant, but to present to our stakeholders in an effort to shift our north star towards a product that is truly for our users.