Pistol Grip Whisk
Product/Industrial 2010 A design class challenged us to redesign a kitchen utensil. I chose to redesign the whisk.
The problem is the orientation of the hand and the shape of the handle. A straight handle is great when held in a "power grip" (like with a baseball bat) or in a "precision grip" (like with a paintbrush or pencil). When a larger handle, like the one on a whisk, is held in a table-knife grip and rotated quickly, the wrist tires very quickly.
To alleviate the extreme wrist pain that comes from using a whisk for a long period of time, I redesigned the handle to make the handle more ergonomic by allowing the wrist to remain straight while the whisk is in use. Here is my final prototype along with 9 sketches I made for this project and scans of pages of my logbook to show my ideation process.
A professional chef tried my prototype and immediately wanted one.
A design class challenged us to redesign a kitchen utensil. I chose to redesign the whisk.
The problem is the orientation of the hand and the shape of the handle. A straight handle is great when held in a "power grip" (like with a baseball bat) or in a "precision grip" (like with a paintbrush or pencil). When a larger handle, like the one on a whisk, is held in a table-knife grip and rotated quickly, the wrist tires very quickly.
To alleviate the extreme wrist pain that comes from using a whisk for a long period of time, I redesigned the handle to make the handle more ergonomic by allowing the wrist to remain straight while the whisk is in use. Here is my final prototype along with 9 sketches I made for this project and scans of pages of my logbook to show my ideation process.
A professional chef tried my prototype and immediately wanted one.