I have been lucky enough to have a mother (or mum for those of you in England) who can cook pretty much anything. From popular Mexican dishes such as posole, tamales, and menudo to those less Mexican such as lasagna, pasta, and noodles. Whatever it is, she cooks it well; I don’t know how she does it, but she does. It’s like magic. You are probably thinking I’m just being bias because after all she’s my mom, but that isn’t the case — trust me on this one.
One thing I noticed was that a great majority of the time she cooks entirely from scratch… Something that seems to be becoming more and more rare nowadays when so many people don’t know how to cook and depend on fast food or instant food. You know who you are, you little-cup-noodle-chomping-aficionados! Anyway, that’s a different topic. So back to where I was. Oh yes, she cooks from scratch, truly homemade food. However, cooking from scratch takes a lot of time and effort so she relies on extra help — kitchen appliances!
I would consider cooking an art form and like in any other art form there are great number of tools available for cooking, in this case appliances that facilitate the whole process. When my mother cooks, one of her most frequently used appliances is the powerful and mighty blender. Blenders are great because they allow you to easily blend and fuse ingredients in a matter of seconds and effortlessly.
Let’s talk a little bit about her blender experience. She had been using the same Oster blender, oh for I don’t know several years now… until it finally gave out just a couple weeks ago. It was such a trooper. At that point she had no choice, but to purchase a new one. She ended purchasing a Cuisinart blender from Macy’s for a little over $100.00. The new blender’s design was more “modernistic” and less organic than her previous Oster, but she loved the way it looked plus it matched her other Cuisinart appliances that she already owned. The Cuisinart blender design is elegant and better looking than her previous blender. However, this new blender turned out to be flawed. Once she began to use the Cuisinart blender, boy, did she complained about it.
The Cuisinart (left) and Oster (right) blenders.
From what I can tell the problem is that the glass container that holds the contents has somewhat of a cuboid-ish shape instead of the more commonly cylinder like shape (see photo above). First of all, this cuboid-ish design might look more “elegant,” but functional-wise it doesn’t seem to encourage the contents that are being blended to circulate through the blades, so the contents don’t really get blended thoroughly as desired. Blending the contents, I would say is the main purpose of a blender! Well, that was the first problem. The second is that the little mouth lip thing (don’t know what the part is called so I’m calling it the “lip”) is placed in the center of a straight edge so when the contents are poured they just flow everywhere making it somewhat messy. Unfortunately, my mom threw away the receipts and boxes of the new blender, so I will have to call Cuisinart and complain about the horrible design. Sigh.
Top view of the Cuisinart (left) and Oster (right) blenders.
So even though, the appearance of a product plays some importance, it is the functionality that holds the greatest importance. The reason I mention this, is because it appears that the designers forgot to do some usability testing or so it seems like it from my mom’s experience. I would say that this is a case where the form follow function principle fails, badly.
