Starting with user-based research, to understand the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, and prepare my empathy study. Whereby I bandage and taped up my hands to understand dexterity limitations, and pains while conducting common activities.

Moving through to Materials and Manufacture considerations, creating a visual board identifying any standard practices or areas of growth within the kitchen equipment space. Providing clear guiding principles for choosing my design directions.

Deciding to follow to main areas: Biomimicry and Retro Functional, I created visual boards to represent any ideas I wished to test out.

Within the biomimicry direction, I looked at botanical features, organic textures, and coloration. Looking into alternatives to the standard methods of cheese grating/ garlic crushing that require less user pressure or strain.

Within the retro functional direction, I spent time looking at utility and simple understanding, to design for simple user experience, identifying key attributes of discomfort, and existing designs that can be incorporated into the garlic crushing or cheese grating techniques to mitigate physical requirements.

Through concept ideation I was able to trial out different design ideas within the design directions, looking into materials, manufacture, aesthetic, and function considerations, to find the best design directions to suite users with limited dexterity or hand strength. Determining the most viable designs to refine and present.

The retro functional design idea is designed for ease of cleaning and limiting hand stress in use. Taking advantage of free rolling aluminium tubing to provide grating power, without adding strain to user. The Garlic crusher is made primarily of metal, to provide good weighting to limit necessary power in use.

The biomimicry design takes  inspiration from the shell of a turtle, to provide the sturdy surface curvature, to improve grating quality without requiring extensive force. The garlic crusher was formed based on the styling of a seashell and tree stump. Using this to inspire better ergonomics, when crushing garlic, using the same  technique used in a mortar style garlic crusher.

From my initial presentation, the biomimicry design was chosen, with the stipulation, that the cheese grater needed to be more in line with the family aesthetic. As such, the grater was redeveloped, taking greater inspiration other organisms, to improve the family-based aesthetic and provide better control when using the grater.

Once finalized, the CAD model was created, for the final design presentation. To test the usability of the product ergonomics this model was then placed in gravity sketch on VR and scaled appropriately, to trial use, and ensure no awkward positions were achieved,  before adding material textures and producing rendered images.