This probably won’t come as much of a surprise, but I’m a fan of gadgets. Whether it’s a consumer gadget you can buy from Best Buy, or some new piece of technology installed in a business, I’m always drawn to new toys to play with.
Over the last year, there have been several gadgets that have caught my eye, either because I’ve read about them or because I’ve used them personally. I wanted to take some time to write about my impressions, mostly because there are several themes that seem consistent across consumer electronics recently — themes that, unfortunately, don’t always help the consumer or improve the product.
In this post, I wanted to take a look at the latest kitchen gadgets from CES. One gadget in particular caught my eye, but unfortunately, not in a good way.
When thinking about successful food technology, two things come to mind: meal box delivery and restaurant delivery. Attempts to put technology directly in the kitchen have mostly failed, but it’s not for a lack of trying. Every year, companies show off their latest innovations at CES, hoping to reverse the trend. I’d like to think that will happen at some point — but it won’t be this year since, once again, there were no standout products. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the people who are designing these devices have either never used their kitchen, or were forced into creating them despite their better judgement.
For example, GE unveiled their latest innovation: the Kitchen Hub. It’s essentially a vent hood that also has a large touch screen mounted to the front of it. My first concern with such a device is what you do about a microwave. Many kitchen layouts these days will put the microwave in a similar location — built into a vent hood over the oven — as a way to open up counter space. But if you use the Kitchen Hub, you’d have to forgo that option (and of course none of the PR photos on the website show an alternate spot for a microwave).
Expecting a cook to give up counter space is a big ask — but it isn’t out of the question as long as the device improves life in the kitchen. Trouble is, the Kitchen Hub appears to focus more on the technology inside it rather than streamlining everyday tasks. For example, in addition to the large display, there are several cameras — one front facing, and at least one mounted below so that you can show off what you’re cooking. The selling point here is that you can make video calls, presumably with family and friends who could provide cooking advice or join in on the experience. Alternatively, if you’re part of the streaming video craze, you could use this setup to improve your streams.
It sounds fancy, but I remain unconvinced that video calling while cooking justifies such a large, invasive setup in the kitchen. Even if you do make a lot of video calls, though, it doesn’t seem ideal. A lot of the cooking process doesn’t happen in front of the stove, so most of the time the person you’re chatting with either wouldn’t see you, or would only see part of you. These same concerns would also apply to streaming — which I imagine would be even more undesirable.
As if trying to justify such a large display, there is Netflix integration so that you can watch movies while cooking. Personally I watch movies when I’m sitting down and relaxing, not when I’m trying to prepare ingredients and follow a recipe — but maybe that’s just me.
Speaking of following a recipe, the Kitchen Hub has a recipe app with “over 5000 recipes”. You can even take a picture of all those hand-written recipes from grandma and add them to its database — but if you were hoping that it would transcribe the recipe to text automatically, you’re out of luck. All you can do is view the photo, so you might as well just keep using the paper copy.
The recipe app seems like it would work in a pinch, but the whole process is designed around a workflow that doesn’t make sense for the typical cook. For example, I typically don’t plan meals while I’m standing in the kitchen. But even if I did, and found a recipe to make, I’d likely need to see what ingredients I have and whether I need to do shopping. Based on the promotional video, Kitchen Hub’s solution to this is an “email ingredients” button — a surprisingly low-tech solution for such a high-end device. Once you finally start cooking, it lets you remotely set the oven temperature from the recipe (as long as you have a compatible GE oven), which I suppose is nice. But it’s not clear if it also has the ability to set or keep track of timers directly from the recipe.
When I saw a device called “Kitchen Hub,” I assumed it would excel at kitchen-related tasks. In some ways, for certain segments of the market, that is perhaps true. But for the majority of cooks, the Kitchen Hub works against the user instead of with them.
It’s hard to know what decisions were made to create the final device, but one aspect is consistent with something I see all the time: the problems being solved don’t get as much attention as the underlying technology and trends used to build the product. Admittedly, it’s an easy trap to fall in to. Software and hardware is constantly evolving, and there is an urge to keep up with all the shiny new features that come along — after all, you don’t want your expertise to grow stale or obsolete. Similarly, you want your product to look modern and innovative, so it’s tempting to use all the latest features available. In the end, these two desires collide and you end up with something like the Kitchen Hub.
The needs of users should always come first. Even if you claim to be an expert, research has to be done in order to verify assumptions and determine priorities. Only then can technology come into the picture. This process takes time, and isn’t always easy — users can be fickle and contradictory — but it’s noticeable if an attempt isn’t made at all.