Free Standing Range

This range represents both my first big project as an Industrial Designer and one that I’m most proud of.

I was early days of CAD and the company I worked for decided it was ready to design and engineer its next project in a more modern media.

As Alias, Catia and ProEngineer were all being considered we would be sent on 1 week training courses to help determine which would be best suited to our specific needs.

ProE was the hands down winner for us and so began the long and often frustrating journey of starting a clean sheet design concurrent with learning a completely new way to do it. ProE in those days was not very stable yet and would often crash if  it didn't like the geometry you were attempting to create.

The reason I titled this section "Sometimes luck is on your side" is because this design was rejected by the parent company  Whirlpool after focus group research showed it to be polarizing. For them they wanted a design that had universal appeal. Luckily,  KitchenAid saw that fact as exactly what they wanted, where the customer either loved it or hated it. 

KitchenAid had it right. When it hit the market it was a runaway success. They owned the premium free standing 30" range market  by the end of its year on the market.