When it comes to homes, the living room and the dining table are often the go-to places for interactions and socialization. These days, however, the lines separating these areas are blurring, if not totally gone, and the kitchen has also become a hub, especially for people who congregate around food and their preparation. Unfortunately, very few people actually pay attention to the appearance of kitchens, looking at them more as functional places that are hidden from the view of other people. Functionality and aesthetics aren’t mutually exclusive, however, and this modular kitchen furniture system demonstrates how careful and smart design can bring not only flexibility but even beauty to any kitchen space.
There are plenty of beautiful kitchen designs, of course, but the vast majority of these employ elaborate furniture, luxurious materials, and the like. Some even sacrifice a bit of convenience and flexibility just to maintain appearances. Cooking tools and tableware are neatly tucked away in cabinets and shelves, hidden from view and out of immediate reach. The Dancing Grid, in contrast, lays everything out in the open and instead uses the very same objects to make the kitchen look alive and visually interesting.
The Dancing Grid is more than just a wall shelf for showing off your kitchen wares, however. Its real selling point isn’t just the modularity, but that is definitely an important element of its appeal. It’s the tasteful use of tiles, a common sight in many kitchens. The different tiles have different functions, ranging from shelving to peg boards to blank spaces that providing some “breathing room” for the arrangement. The Dancing Grid not only provides the storage functionality that homeowners need, it also delivers it in an interesting manner that adds some personal touch to your kitchen.
The In-Out tiles, on the other hand, are designed for horizontal surfaces, like kitchen tables and sinks. In fact, the design replaces the conventional metal sink with these tiles, creating a uniform appearance that conveys the image of smoothness even in corners. It still has an element of modularity where owners can create different combinations of containers and slots as their needs dictate.
Hoook tiles (not a typo) bring a different kind of flexibility. The rectilinear tiles provide a way to hang utensils or hooks as well as an add-on shelf for objects that need to stand on a flat surface. When the tile is placed upside-down, however, it creates a convenient groove to hide lighting, such as an LED strip, to add to the ambiance of the kitchen in a subtle way. Last but not least, Shaded is a purely decorative tile that gives the illusion of different hues without actually adding color, thanks to its play of light and shadows from its slightly angled form. Without going overboard and using the single concept of tiles, this modular kitchen system is able to create a more interesting atmosphere that people can gather in while still keeping kitchen functionality at its maximum.
Dubbed “Design’s Secret Weapon” by Fast Company, Whipsaw’s designs are so ubiquitous they simply can’t be ignored. With over 300 design awards, and nearly a hundred clients comprising the likes of Meta, Google, Samsung, Dell, Ford, Sony, and Peloton, Whipsaw’s work exists across multiple industries, covering the kind of breadth that most design studios only dream of. The studio was founded by Dan Harden in 1999, headquartering in San Francisco, where Whisaw established inroads into what would eventually become the Silicon Valley of the world… However, its impact can be seen across diverse industries including consumer electronics, housewares, computing, robotics, medical, scientific, and commercial products.
This spotlight hopes to capture Whipsaw’s approach to design by chronicling some of its latest work and analyzing the design trends that emerge from them. Whipsaw’s multidisciplinary team of strategists, designers, and engineers work across four categories, covering all aspects of a product journey from research & strategy to industrial design, visual design, and mechanical engineering. In October last year, Harden even announced the formation of the Whipsaw Design Lab (WDL) – a space for designers to truly explore the potential of creative thinking without the constraint of technology, budget, or a ‘client concern’. “WDL has no requirements, clients, timelines, or limits. Just pure Design spelled with a capital D. And most of all, no compromises,” he says.
Created over a period of 3 years, Tonal combines exercise with technology and machine learning to bring the gym trainer to your home. Tonal is a wall-mounted fitness device that offers a unique combination of modern hardware and personalized coaching. Unlike traditional gym equipment that relies on large metal plates and gravity, Tonal uses an electromagnetic resistance engine to provide smooth and precise weight in single-pound increments. This is supplemented by an intelligent touch-sensitive display that acts as your feedback machine, allowing you to measure every ounce of progress as you get through your reps.
The device was a result of a 3-year collaboration between Whipsaw and Tonal. Every aspect of its design was meticulously crafted to ensure optimal performance, durability, and aesthetics. When not in use, Tonal is sleek and unobtrusive, blending seamlessly into any wall. However, when activated, its arms pivot out on vertical columns, allowing for a wide range of exercises, including standing lat pulldowns, low squats, and lateral chest flys. Tonal marks a steady shift in home-based exercise, an emerging trend in the fitness space that also propelled companies like Peloton to fame.
Kabata Smart Weights
Yet another innovation in the fitness space, Kabata smart weights are a revolutionary set of adjustable-weight dumbbells designed for strength training. With just a simple turn of a knob, the weights can be instantly adjusted from 5 to 60 pounds. The weight plates are locked or unlocked together using a hidden camshaft mechanism, allowing you to assemble the desired total weight in 5-pound increments. The Kabata weight handles are equipped with advanced sensors that can detect movement, acceleration, angular velocity, and position, making it easier for you to optimize your workouts. Additionally, the handles feature haptic drivers that vibrate to correct your physical form and motivate you during your workout.
The Kabata isn’t your average pair of weights. The Kabata system is fully connected and comes with a mobile app that incorporates data analytics and predictive AI to automatically adjust the weights for you in tailored workout programs. The app pulls data from the weights to your smartphone, allowing you to access training programs, monitor key performance metrics, and share your workout with your community. This sleek system is a great example of how Whipsaw aims at modernizing a conventional product category by relying on bleeding-edge technology to truly uplift a product’s UX.
Tile Bluetooth Trackers
Creating a Bluetooth Tracker isn’t easy when it’s an absolutely new category. Tile’s first devices were sold in 2013, giving it a significant edge over other trackers like the AirTag, which came nearly 8 years later. This meant pretty much starting with an entirely blank page, which was the challenge for Whipsaw and Tile. The companies have been close collaborators ever since, working on all the newer SKUs like the Mate, Sticker, Slim, Pro, and Ultra. Each Tile device offers a greatly increased finding range of up to 400 feet, a louder ring, and voice-enabled finding through Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. “We designed these trackers in several form factors with optional attachment methods in order to fit every use case, whether attached to a key chain, in a wallet, or directly adhered to your favorite items,” say the folks at Whipsaw. “There are many design improvements from our previous 2018 line, including smaller dimensions, lighter weight, and softer forms that feel great in the hand.” Tile was recently awarded #5 on Fast Company‘s list of Most Innovative Companies 2021.
Google Trekker Backpack for Google Earth
Google’s Trekker backpack is a mapping device that works in tandem with Street View, Google Maps, and Google Earth. It captures and creates interactive maps of locations that are inaccessible to vehicles, such as nature trails, iconic landmarks like Machu Picchu, and crowded city centers. The Trekker is a valuable tool for cartographers due to its unique mobility, and it is currently being used to document some of the world’s most magnificent places for everyone to learn about and enjoy. It’s even spawned a sub-culture of travelers committed to revealing new frontiers and sharing their experiences with the global community.
The backpack is an all-in-one system that includes a 360-degree camera array, two positioning LIDARS for mapping terrains, a computer with heat sink cooling, and two hot-swap batteries. For Whipsaw, the challenge was to create a portable solution that was waterproof, highly durable, and worked seamlessly. Additionally, it was also prudent to make the Trekker backpack comfortable for extended wear time, ensuring it was well-balanced, lightweight, and easy to put on and take off.
Koda AI Robot Dog
In 2018, Whipsaw was approached by KODA Inc. to collaborate on a project integrating their fusion multi-processor and AI-based software. The result was the KODA Robot Dog, the first high-end domestic robot dog to run on a decentralized blockchain network. Equipped with an 11 teraflop processor capable of A.I. machine-learning, the KODA Robot Dog relied on a hive-mind of sorts to optimize its behavior. It even sported four 3-dimensional surround-view cameras and 14 motors, including in the neck and tail, giving it dog-like gestural qualities. By sharing data with other KODA dogs on the network, the robot was able to learn from experiences it had never encountered before. For example, a KODA dog in Phoenix could learn how to avoid slipping on ice by receiving knowledge from other KODAs based in colder climates like Anchorage, Alaska, or Toronto, Canada. Whipsaw’s design ensured that the KODA Robot Dog retained a friendly, cute demeanor despite its incredible capabilities.
Bear Robotics Servi Food Service Robot
Sort of like a Roomba for hospitality, the Servi automates table-waiting with its unique design that’s built to help with restaurant workflows by both delivering food to tables and clearing the tables at the end of a meal. When guests arrive, Servi promptly welcomes them with a friendly voice and courteous gestures. Customers can easily place their order with Servi, who then transmits it directly to the kitchen. Once the order is prepared, Servi is equipped with one of her two top platforms to efficiently deliver the food to the designated table. While navigating, Servi adeptly avoids any individuals or obstacles in her path. After the meal, diners can conveniently place their dishes in Servi’s bottom bin as she returns to the table.
Whipsaw considered every type of restaurant environment while developing Servi’s custom design—from cramped and crowded rooms to gleaming banquet halls with spotless interiors—and made her as safe, quiet, and washable as possible. “We also packed a ton of technology into her small footprint so she never gets in the way,” the company says.
Hisense Projector
We’ve covered a fair number of projectors on YD, and UHT projectors seem to overwhelmingly be the future of the technology. They require no distance from your projection surface, and are capable of vivid, highly detailed imagery, while also projecting audio from in front of you to match the visuals. Hisense and Whipsaw worked extensively to develop a line of UHT projectors with timeless beauty, quality materials, unique form, and exquisite detailing. “Throughout this project, our primary goals were to innovate on product configurations that would be compact enough to compete with standard TVs and to create aesthetic solutions that would excite internal stakeholders and ultimately end-users,” say the Whipsaw team.
PacBio Revio Sequencing System
Proving that there’s really no industry that can’t benefit from Whipsaw’s approach to design innovation, the company worked with PacBio to help design Revio – a gene sequencing system that can be utilized for various purposes such as human genetic analysis, cancer research, and agricultural genomics. The Revio has the capability to sequence up to 1,300 whole human genomes annually for less than $1,000 per genome. Whipsaw collaborated with PacBio to create a new user interaction model and a stunning industrial design for the instrument, which includes an intuitive user interface.
Revio’s bold monolithic design creates an impression of solid reliability, sophistication, and cutting-edge tech. Meanwhile, the black towering box comes with a hint of color, tying in with PacBio’s own visual branding. “Every detail was meticulously crafted for perfection, from the single sheet of back-painted Gorilla glass on the sliding door to the Bugatti-inspired woven wire ventilation grill. The fit and finish are exemplary, with premium materials and textures throughout.”
Humans eat a lot of food that comes from plants and animals, but not all the parts of these living creatures are deemed edible or appetizing. These parts include internal organs, bones, and even skin, parts that get discarded and thrown out during processing. Unsurprisingly, this waste starts to pile up and cause harm to the planet, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any decrease in human appetite and consumption. Fortunately, some people have started to get smarter and use that human ingenuity to either help reduce food waste or use them for something completely different. In fact, some people have even discovered how beautiful this waste can be, such as these stunning tiles that would shock you to learn are made from ignored and discarded fish scales.
Animal skins have plenty of uses, some more wasteful than others. Some skin can be eaten, of course, but others are simply taken for their material value. Leather has always been a controversial material because of this, loved for its natural properties but criticized for its cruel source. Fortunately, there are now attempts to create more sustainable alternatives to leather that don’t involve harmful plastics either.
Fish scales, on the other hand, are simply discarded because they aren’t exactly edible. They are thrown out by both food and aquaculture industries and add to the growing amount of waste in our environment. It turns out, however, that these seemingly useless scales have the components that make them as hard as stone yet as beautiful as marble. And thus, Scalelite was born. Using a sustainable process and no harmful ingredients, Scalelite transforms wasted and ugly fish scales into beautiful materials that can cover walls or floors and even become parts of furniture.
Scalelite also has other admirable properties beyond being 100% natural and attractive. It has natural fire resistance and is dirt-repellent, making it suitable for use in hospitality and retail applications. It’s easier to clean, too, even without using harmful detergents. And, of course, it’s completely recyclable, so you won’t have to fill guilty when you do have to throw the tiles away after probably decades of use.
It’s definitely encouraging to see such efforts to salvage what most of us have considered garbage and turn them into something not only useful but actually appealing as well. It gives credence to the expression that one man’s trash might be another one’s treasure. Sadly, Scalelite is just a small fish in a gigantic industry trying to make a difference, and we need a lot more of these sustainable materials to stop the planet from hurting.
It takes a keen eye to be able to question the design of products we take for granted. Why are certain products like weighing scales designed the way they are? Given that they’re just literally a platform to stand on, why can’t they look more in tune with their surroundings? Designer Sije Chen found himself questioning that logic, which led to the design brief behind the Tiles Weight Scale. Simply put, the bathroom scale looks literally bathroom-inspired. With a glossy, tiled design, the product fits perfectly into the contemporary bathroom, looking more like functional decor than an appliance. Rather cool, no?
Designer: Sije Chen
A finalist at the Spark Awards last year, the Tiles Weight Scale looks like a panel of your quintessential ceramic bathroom tiles. They aren’t made from ceramic, which means they aren’t slippery, and the white panel has an LED display that shines through the material, activating the moment you stand on it. That way, it serves its purpose wonderfully when it needs to, and blends right into the bathroom’s decor when not in use!
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Sequencing System
