Overview

• Role: Team Lead, Product Design (research, concept, 3D modeling, physical prototyping)

• Team: 3 product design students (Andrea Mollinedo, Lluvia Padilla and me)

• Timeline: August – December 2022

• Process: Design Thinking (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, evaluate)

• Context: Product design concentration project, with feedback from Whirlpool experts

• Deliverable: Researched concept, 3D model, renders and a high-fidelity physical prototype

The brief was to imagine a kitchen product for 2030. Each team picked a different appliance to rethink, and we chose the dishwasher. I led the team from the first interview to the final prototype. Everyone did a bit of everything: Andrea produced the final renders, I built the final 3D model in Fusion 360, and we made the big decisions together.

The Challenge

Designing for 2030 meant looking ahead without losing sight of what people struggle with today. Dishwashers are built for a permanent kitchen and a fixed spot. We wanted to know what one would look like for people who cook in smaller, more flexible spaces, including those settling into an apartment for a short time, who care about quality, and who would rather spend their time on something other than dishes. Our challenge became: design a dishwasher for the near future that fits any kitchen, feels premium, and gives time back.

Water made it feel worth solving, and so did the way things get made. Research suggests a dishwasher can use less than half the water per item compared with typical hand washing (Schencking & Stamminger, 2022), so making automatic washing easy to adopt can save water every single day. For us, that was only half of the story. It mattered just as much to think about what the product is made of and how it is produced, so we set out to design something that could be part of a circular economy and that people could trust to be good for their kitchen and for the planet.

Starting With People

We followed a Design Thinking process, and it started with empathy. We ran three 1:1 ethnographic interviews with people aged 25 to 30, one per team member. Three conversations is a small sample, so we treated what we heard as direction rather than proof. Instead of only asking questions, we asked them to show us their favorite kitchen tools, their kitchens, and the small rituals around cooking and cleaning up.

Back together, we pinned everything to a board and grouped the most repeated phrases on sticky notes by theme. That was our define step: five qualities kept coming back, and each one became a design principle:

• Quality. People buy things they trust to last, so material selection had to be a priority.

• Practicality. The word we kept was countertop: an object easy to place anywhere in a kitchen or apartment, and portable.

• Control. The word was order: they like knowing where things are and how they work.

• Time efficiency. The product should give time back for what they enjoy.

• Ease. It should make life simpler, which is why a dishwasher was the right appliance.

  
  

Exploring Concepts

For ideation, we sketched individually and then chose our strongest ideas to prototype. In the end we built three different directions.

We then moved through two rounds of prototyping:

1) Form and size. A styrofoam model to test proportions, how it feels in the hands, and how much room it takes on a counter.

Mine opened the door from bottom to top. We dropped it for ergonomic reasons: opening it would take too much space around the machine, which defeats the point of a countertop product.

We combined the best of the options. From my prototype we kept the chamfered corners. From the final model we changed the screen: instead of a flat, square panel, we tilted it back 20 degrees so it is easier to read and the whole object feels less boxy.

2) Near-final prototype. A high-fidelity model built from 3D-printed parts, styrene and wood, finished with an automotive gray filler (sanded smooth between coats), professional paint and a printed interface label.

Choosing Color

We researched color trends before choosing our palette. We wanted a color that transmits hope and helps calm the stress of long hours behind screens and the anxiety many people feel about the future, starting from care and balance between our virtual and natural lives. For a product imagined for 2030, color was part of how the appliance should feel in a kitchen, not a finish added at the end.

Designing the Interface

We paired icons with words so the interface works for people who read symbols and for those who do not, and we ordered the controls by importance, reading left to right:

Clock → Power → Start / Pause → Fruit and vegetable wash → Speeds

We explored other layouts, icon sets and screens in Illustrator before settling on this one.

Expert Feedback From Whirlpool

For the evaluation step, we did not run user tests in this phase. Instead, Whirlpool’s team evaluated the prototype and gave us direct feedback:

• Chamfered corners would soften the form (we already had them and strengthened them).

• Stainless steel can get heavy, which matters for a portable product. They suggested a plastic that could still be eco-friendly as long as it could be disassembled, which was already in our plan.

• Explore a form that is not entirely square, for example an incline or a gesture on the door.

What changed: we refined the finishes, tilted the front of the screen, and added an opening gesture on the door. We kept our material direction but took the weight warning seriously as a trade-off to manage.

We also made the unit easier to hold. It felt a bit large in the hand, so we added openings at the bottom that work as grips. We made this call as a team from handling the prototype, and it is the first thing I would put in front of real users.

Designing for a Circular Economy

Sustainability became part of the project because I pushed for it, and we developed it further in a sustainability course. We designed LAVECO from the start to belong to a circular economy and to support UN Sustainable Development Goal 12, responsible production and consumption, alongside Goal 6, clean water. It also echoed Whirlpool México’s own vision of minimizing its environmental impact. The main decisions:

• Built to come apart. A disassemblable structure, so parts can be repaired, replaced or recycled instead of discarded as one piece.

• Materials chosen with their whole life in mind. Stainless steel was a candidate because it is 100% recyclable and averages about 60% recycled content (ISSF), balanced against Whirlpool’s weight warning and the option of a disassemblable plastic.

• Quality over disposability. People told us they buy for quality, and a product made to last is also a less wasteful one.

• Water in every wash. The goals were to make people more aware of how much water they use, to save water and time, and to make washing fruit and vegetables easy.

  
  

Outcome

LAVECO went from interviews to a polished physical prototype in one semester. Whirlpool’s experts gave us strong feedback on the work, and our team organized well around an ambitious scope. I do not have usage metrics because this was an academic project, but I do have a clear record of how research turned into decisions.

What I Take With Me

LAVECO taught me that research earns its place when it turns into constraints you can design against. Countertop, order and time efficient guided our decisions more than any aesthetic idea, and expert feedback was most useful when I treated it as a trade-off to weigh, like the weight of steel against its recyclability.

It also showed me that each person's unique strengths add up to the final product, and that building close bonds with the people you work with makes a demanding journey far more enjoyable. Andrea and Lluvia brought dedication and professionalism to every stage, and their collaboration and friendship are why we finished on time and why LAVECO feels like one coherent product. I am grateful to them, and I look for teams like this one, where working with new people means learning things I would not have found alone.

If I did it again, I would validate the grip openings and the interface order with real users before locking them in. That is the habit I want to bring to every project: turn open questions into tests while changes are still cheap.