Oxo good grips peeler

The OXO good grips peeler is a great example of person centred design.

Sam Farber founded OXO an award winning cooking tools company as a result of improvements he made to an everyday vegetable peeler. Whilst on holiday with his wife, Betsy, who suffered from arthritis, he noticed she found it difficult and uncomfortable using a peeler with a standard design. This sparked an idea for Sam, so he and his son hired “Smart Design” to come up with a solution. These vegetable peelers became popular with people suffering from similar difficulties to Sam’s wife. But, they were also championed by Chefs and kitchen professionals across the globe. The design for the peeler that Sam had conceived won countless awards. Sam took his approach to creating them and started applying them to improving other tools.

Another illustration from a slide of a talk I did for WordCamp Edinburgh at the weekend on progressive enhancement. I have written up the talk here.