Wednesday, July 5 Turbochef Oven Launches
I’m excited to say that I project that I was heavily involved with has come to fruition, and has been written up in Businessweek (which quotes me quite generously
). It’s the Turbochef speed-cook oven, a very high-end double wall oven that can cook foods in speeds a fraction of their normal time (such as a 12lb turkey in 42 minutes instead of several hours). Unlike earlier fast-cooking methods such as microwaves, I can attest from personal experience that Turbochef’s oven turns out dishes that are at least as good as those cooked in conventional ovens. This was a really challenging and interesting project to work on, as I enjoy cooking and the culture of food, as well as figuring out how to make high tech products fit into people’s existing lives and ways of doing things.
This was a real 360 degree problem. To understand its whole scope we did a broad range of research to arrive at the insights that led to the distinctive design: ethnography, retail interviews and shadowing, talking with pro-chefs and caterers, talking with kitchen designers, taking cooking classes, researching changes over the last 50 years of food’s relationship to culture/technology/gender roles, and using the oven itself to learn its differences.
A number of speed cook ovens have been on the market for a while, but none have been very successful. In fact, Turbochef provided us an older oven based on a variation of their technology (sold under another brand) for us to use, and use it we did for frog’s traditional “coffeetime” that all frog offices do at 4pm. My colleague, Pilar Strutin-Belinoff, worked up a great array of recipes for us to try in the oven for a week, and it gave us a great lesson of using the product first hand, and what things we really needed to work on in the interface.
Though the unusual looks of the oven (more on that in a moment) are what grab attention first, the interface was a huge challenge. Speedcooking ovens work in a fundamentally different way, not just in terms of their technologies but also in how they affect your cooking style and the timing of your dishes. Figuring out how long to cook something is more complicated than usual as you cannot rely on normal menu instructions. The cooking temperature and method (convection, forced air, or microwave) have to be varied algorithmically over time, which requires knowing exactly what’s in the oven, both in terms of composition and weight. The interface had to gracefully accomodate all this complexity in a way that helped occasional cooks feel comfortable and not make enthusiast cooks feel shackled. The interface design team at frog, led by Cordell Ratzlaff, did a great job.
The industrial design was led by Andy Logan, and the look of it is stunning (and the pictures don’t really convey the sensuality and massiveness of the design). It intentionally harkens back to older stoves like Wedgewoods, which was something we found in our in-home visits that people really had fond memories of, and they really preferred that softer feel to the hard-edged modern ovens. (Check out the slideshow that Businessweek has handily provided, you’ll see a lot of these “euro” style ovens.) There are many details I love about the design, not least of which is the analog clock.
Businessweek makes passing mention of the business challenge of this project also: Turbochef was a commercial company trying to enter the residential space, which is a very difficult thing to do in this industry; there aren’t that many precedents. It’s not well known that Viking actually didn’t start out as a commercial appliance manufacturer, they have conjured a well-crafted story giving that impression (and done very well with it). Wolf is one of the few to have succeeded. But I think Turbochef is in great shape to succeed as well. The oven was a hit at the big kitchen appliance show K/BIS earlier this year, and it’s exciting to see how it will do in the market.
Business, Culture, Design, Strategy, Technology, User Experience
Reader Comments (5)
Came across your website on a reference from another blogger, and say the TurboChef.
It looks really impressive, so I was quite interested in discovering more about the product. I don't know if you are still in touch with the company or no, but I tried to register on their website and hit a big snag.
They don't accept registrations outside the US. I tried to use their contact pages but the same problem - you can't submit info until you supply US address details. Since I am based in New Zealand, I couldn't get in touch with them.
Appreciate it if you could follow it up with them or alternatively drop me an email address I can send some questions to as I am very keen on this oven.
Regards,
PC
Thanks for your note. So far as I know Turbochef is only selling (for now) in the US, so you may not be able to get the oven in NZ for a while. You could try contacting them at their corporate contact page (http://www.turbochef.com/commercial/contact-request.htm ) and see if they are able to provide you more details that way. Hope this helps!
Adam
Frog did great work on design - but Turbochef did not execute the transition from a commercial to consumer unit.
I bought one in Nov. 2007 and received an immature, poorly made, unit that in less than an hour went from the piece of art to 410 lbs of junk. I am their target audience - and quick evaluation revealed multitude of manufacturing and quality control problems. Turbochef went caput and I could not finish cooking my 2007 Thanksgiving. I sent it back to the store when technicians could not repair it timely without ripping it fully out of the wall to change a suspect fuse, not to mention need for software update, software blocking what I wanted done, and catastrophic failure - all within 2 weeks. As for Turbochef support - great verbal support. Turbochef's sandbox reaction - we will not sell you another oven!
I would love to have a mature product from a company which stands behind their product and takes full responsibility for their errors. Turbochef is not such company yet. I'll wait - but by that time others will have similar products I hope
And here is July 2009 update on Turbochef: Do Not Buy It Yet.
Turbochef implemented what I asked them for in 2007. They allowed the use of microwave directly. Turbochef made changes to programing and now microwave can be set although it is hidden in Favorites menu.
But Turbochef Speedoven still is unreliable, expensive to service and repair. No respectable dealer wants to carry it because customers who pay that kind of money do demand quality - and that Turbochef Speedoven is lacking sorrily. If they only listened to me - but ... oh well - they cannot afford me anyway.