Design a Spice Rack That Blind Home Cooks Can Use Without Sighted Help

Design a spice rack that people who are blind can use easily and on their own. Explain whom you are designing for, how they find and use spices today, what you would build and ship first, and how you would know the design works. ```hint Follow one spice through a recipe Walk through a single cooking moment step by step, from deciding on a spice to putting the jar back, and note each step that today depends on sight or on another person's help. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should the design serve only people with no usable vision, or also people with low vision who can read large, high-contrast print? - Is this a purely physical product, or can it include electronics, a phone app or a voice assistant? - Is it for a person's own home kitchen, or also for shared kitchens where other people move the jars? - Are there price or business constraints, for example a mass-market product versus an assistive device sold through specialist channels? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Segmentation of blind users (for example braille readers versus non-readers, people blind from birth versus those who lost sight later) and a reasoned focus - A step-by-step cooking journey that exposes concrete pain points: finding, identifying, measuring, avoiding spills, tracking freshness and refilling - Solutions that work with wet or greasy hands in a real kitchen, with a clear first version and reasons for what was deferred - Testing with blind cooks, and success metrics such as identification errors and tasks completed without sighted help - Trade-offs between low-tech and connected options, including cost, power, durability and cleaning ### Follow-up Questions - Many blind adults do not read braille. How does your first version serve them? - How would you test the prototype, and what result would make you change the design? - How would the design change for a household where sighted family members also use and rearrange the spices?