We’ve seen quite a change in appliance trends of late. Today we bring you two relatively new products that will be around for some time to come.
Schott has responded to the latest trend in user interfaces in the electrical appliance industry by incorporating minimalistic design and intuitive surface control with a new technology called Smart Touch. Discrete finger grooves and sliders in the glass surface now intuitively guide use, instead of push buttons, knobs, and slide controls that used to cause turmoil. This means completely new design and operator concepts can be realized for coffee machines, refrigerators, medical devices, and other industrial applications.
Schott’s smart Touch offers appliance manufacturers a multitude of new possibilities. A new manufacturing technology grinds and positions cavities so that capacitive switches can be easily installed. These switches then serve as tactile orientation guides for appliance operators, enabling manufacturers (they make products for a variety of appliance manufacturers) to stand out from the crowd and sharpen their unique brand identity by offering a distinctive operator interface. Smart Touch offers many new possibilities. Punctiform control elements are just as possible as rings or sliders. They can produce matte or polished finger grooves with different depths and diameters. Illuminating or printing colors and symbols on the respective areas opens up even more design options.
Besides the design possibilities, glass control elements also offer a number of other advantages over conventional mechanical switches. Glass elements are extremely durable because they contain no moving parts. Furthermore, they don’t have joints, corners, or edges where dirt and bacteria can settle. They are also easy to clean because the glass surface is completely waterproof and resistant to aggressive cleaning agents. Both aspects ensure better hygiene and usability.
Smeg’s new Linear SFPA140 multifunction oven, with its signature sleek Stopsol silver glass and stainless steel styling, features a beautiful coloured LED touch screen with the clearest graphics and an immediately intuitive SLogic interface. This screen is the ‘nerve-centre’ of the entire appliance – touch the graphics to take you instantly to pre-set recipes, temperatures, cooking functions, pyrolytic cleaning functions, power saving options and timing modes. Importantly all recipes – for meats, fish, poultry, vegetables, cakes and desserts etc – are specific to Australian culinary tastes. Fish recipes for example relate to our local fish species and meat results are geared to the Australian understanding of ‘rare’, medium etc. And while the S-Logic technology takes the worry and doubt out of cooking a meal, more confident cooks can of set the oven to their own preferences or over-ride any aspect of a pre-set menu.
And speaking of Smeg – our good friends at current.com.au are running a poll on favourite brands – have your vote at www.current.com.au. No guesses as to who is winning!
