Cool, and User Friendly
Many of us have strange, green furry things living in the back of the refrigerator. Even Edward Hall, an American anthropologist, once noted that though he can spot arrowheads in the desert, the refrigerator is a jungle in which he is easily lost. To Thousand Oaks-based RKS Design, refrigerator morass is a challenge to be met: Its solution is the new Amana Messenger.
“The unusual features in the refrigerator came out of a process of developing innovation labs and working with Amana on different types of user research,” explains Ravi Sawnhey, president and founder of RKS Design, which has 30 designers and engineers on staff. “We did ethnographic research and we interviewed consumers about refrigerators. We worked with cultural anthropologist Robert Deutsch to find the ways people used their refrigerators. In fact, it was a year of just research before we started conceptualizing, brainstorming and designing. It was quite a process, but then, a refrigerator is a big part of someone’s life.”
During that year they recognized that the kitchen is the focal point of the home and that the refrigerator acts as a kind of message board for family members. Psychologically, they found that consumers’ perceptions of what good refrigerators need include cleanliness, freshness and safety.
With those and other concerns in mind, RKS Design got to work creating innovations that would be meaningful for everyday usage. “We didn’t want any nonsense or a bell-and-whistle kind of thing. ... Our branding strategy was to connect with the consumer so positively that they always feel good about Amana,” Sawnhey says. “We’re all looking for those companies that reward us for being their customers.”
After three years of development, the Amana Messenger, retailing for $1,849, is ready. It has the clean lines of most of the products that RKS designs, and a certain space-age quality that anticipates newness. No disappointment there. Among the features are water and ice dispensers on the door that fill containers 40% faster than most.
Voice messages can be left for family members at the touch of a button, and the system also lets you know when it’s time to change the water or air filter; the quick-chill freezer compartment allows for rapid cooling of drinks, with a timer to tell when they’re ready; beverage-chiller doors are big enough for large items, and dishwasher-safe mats keep containers from moving on the shelves.
“There has been a tremendous amount of customer interest in the Messenger. We’ve recently rolled this product out across the country, so it is just now appearing in retail outlets,” says Kevin Kacere, vice president of refrigeration products for Maytag appliances, which owns Amana.
And this is just one product that RKS Design has refashioned. After 20 years in business, RKS Design has changed the way many products look. Among their most successful products is Teddy Ruxpin, a red-shirted teddy bear that was the first toy to use cassette tapes to speak, sing and tell stories, and which I.D. Magazine described last April as a toy icon of the 1980s. The firm also created the Benwin GX6 speakers, which use a flat-panel technology that uniformly spreads vibrations over a flat surface, allowing for a sleek, thinner, speaker system with good sound, considered a low-cost alternative to the high design of a Bang and Olufson, for example.
Other recent RKS Design products include the Fossil Palm Watch, which tells time but also has a calendar, phone book and to-do list all in one, and Sawnhey’s personal favorite, the Intrigo Lapstation Pro, a lightweight collapsing desk workstation.
“With the Lapstation we came up with the idea and then built a company around it. I’m especially proud to put something in the marketplace that people love,” says Sawnhey.
The firm works in almost every area, from teeth-whitening equipment to headset amplifiers to task lights to sporting goods. In fact, the Amana refrigerator is the first appliance RKS has done.
Sawhney says the methodology he’s developed allows RKS Design to create a variety of products. “I’ve been influenced by Don Norman’s book, ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ (Doubleday, 1990), and by what I’ve read of feng shui. Objects are more significant than just their functions in how we feel about ourselves. Our memories are visual, so when we look at an object it can remind us of good times. Or we can have predispositions about different objects and shapes.
“For example, shapes that slump always look heavy. That helped me when I was thinking about door handles and how they should look. We all remember opening a door with force that we thought looked heavy, and then having it fly open because it was light.” Using that knowledge, Sawhney made sure the door handles on the Amana Messenger were balanced so they look both friendly and beefy. “That speaks of a refrigerator that’s solid and reliable,” he concludes.
What’s next? “We’re creating a new and fresh concept for an electric guitar, since not much has been done in that field lately. And for over a year we’ve been working on a chair that we think is brilliant.” It probably tells you to sit up straight and eat your vegetables.
More information about the company is available at www.rksdesign.com.
The first exhibition to explore how a deeply involved client worked with architect Richard J. Neutra to create an iconic house on the East Coast is on view at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum through Jan. 27. Titled “Windshield: Richard Neutra’s House for the John Nicholas Brown Family,” the exhibit follows the design and construction of the house commissioned by the Browns in the mid-1930s as their summer house on Fishers Island, N.Y.
Named for the extensive use of glass on its exterior, the Windshield house represented a radical break with conventional American ideas of residential design, especially in the conservative environment of Fishers Island. It also represents a search on the part of Neutra and the Browns for a modern architectural style based on American accomplishments and characteristics.
The house was completed in 1938 but was damaged by a hurricane a few months later. It was rebuilt, then destroyed by fire in 1973. Since the house’s demise, it’s been largely overlooked. However, two years of almost daily correspondence between the architect and his client make Windshield one of the best-documented houses in 20th century architectural history.
“One of the most important things about this exhibit is the wealth of materials that were available from both UCLA’s Neutra archives and Brown University,” says Brooke Hodge, co-curator of the exhibit and curator of architecture and design at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “There is a complete picture of the client-architect relationship that is very rare. Luckily, both Neutra and Brown kept all that was pertinent.”
More than 130 objects are included in the exhibition, including original renderings, sketches, working drawings and blueprints by Neutra, as well as examples of the intense correspondence between Neutra and John Nicholas Brown.
There are also exterior and interior photographs of the finished house, computer-generated renderings of the interior and exterior and examples of the art, furnishings, furniture and light fixtures the Browns chose for the house.
Sackler Museum is at 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Mass. (617) 495-9400. www.artmu seums.Harvard.edu.
