Prediction
This product froths milk by spinning it around and incorporating air into it and appeals to people that make their own drinks at home. The design is lightweight, easy to power on and off, portable, cheap, and comfortable to hold. Constraints may have been price and material was constrained to lighter materials.
b. Observation
There’s a motor that spins the rod around to froth the milk. It does a good job. It’s pretty easy to use and it is comfortable in weight, size, etc. The handle is a good size to fit in a hand. The button is near the thumb’s resting spot which lets you switch it on and off easily. The rod is long enough to get submerged in milk but not so long that its difficult to use. The affordances and mapping is the switch that only does the one thing of turning it on and off. It’s clear that you grab the thicker part of it, the handle, and not the rod. The battery compartment has arrows to show which way to open it.
c. Test
The IKEA one didn’t perform as well as the fancy $15 one. It frothed it but it didn’t stay that way very long and it took a longer time to get similar results. My own does just okay. We got some bubbles and some volume but it took a long time and made a mess.
The lid goes onto the cap but there was no mapping to tell you that you need to shake it. There’s also no feedback. The strengths is that its pretty portable, easy to store, and easy to clean. The weaknesses is that it does make a mess and there is a dangerous bolt sticking up out of it. It also only works with one size of cup. It is not durable either. I would definitely get a lid that fits more tightly. I would also make it more safe by getting rid of the bolt’s extra height.
d. Disassemble your IKEA device
The motor spins the rod around which stirs up the milk. There are 11 parts, and the rod is the only one that moves. I’m surprised at how easy it was to take apart.
e. Analyze
The product is very affordable but its slow and it isn’t very efficient.
I think one improvement could be making it go faster because it did take a long time to foam up.
I learned that products have a lot more complexity on the inside that you would think.
