Milk Frother

7:48 AM vivvzh 1 Comments

When others ask me what engineering class is like, I reply that I’m taking adult kindergarten because I don’t remember another time since my Play-Doh and building block days that I’ve had so much fun in class. After building our own milk frothers (using Legos!) at the end of Class 2, we spent Class 3 taking apart and analyzing IKEA’s $2 version, comparing it to a higher-end model, and testing out our homemade versions.

IKEA Milk Frother

The IKEA milk frother promises to fully froth hot or cold milk within 20 seconds. I tested this to be true; the device efficiently frothed my cup of cold milk without making any splashes. Its handle is designed with a side push-switch that intuitively fits in the user’s right or left hand. The grooves on the switch and its visible sliding “slot” is an effective affordance. The battery slot at the end of the handle also has grooves that prompt the user to slide the cap out. Once the device is switched on, the most obvious feedback is that the wand begins to spin. I thought that the device’s main weakness was its lack of feedback for battery power. It’s impossible to tell if the device is running out of battery until, presumably, it stops working.

I then disassembled the device and guessed about the nature of each piece. From taking the frother apart, I’ve learned how tricky it is to cram even a few “simple” functionalities into a device. For example, though the push-switch looks uncomplicated from the outside, on the inside it’s connected to the motor circuit by carefully assembled bits of metal.

High End Milk Frother

The IKEA milk frother costs around $3, whereas this higher end milk frother (first photo, to the right) costs $20. They are equally effective at frothing milk, but the higher end milk frother feels clearly made of more durable and aesthetically pleasing materials. The handle is made of heavy, polished plastic, and its bottom is made of rubber. The price differential comes from the high end frother’s use of these materials, but I’d guess that the difference in manufacturing costs isn’t actually that much—most likely, the frother is overpriced due to its market positioning, branding, etc. If I were to buy a milk frother, I’d stick with the IKEA one. Shiny plastic isn’t worth $17 to me.

Homemade Milk Frother

This is the homemade milk frother my partner Michelle and I made. It’s designed to be manually twisted up and down, which turns the wheel through the milk creating bubbles. Though our frother did create bubbles in the milk, it was slower and much more labor-intensive than the IKEA frother. The bubbles it created were gone quickly. Our product’s main affordance is its two handles and its wheel shape, which suggests to the user that they should grasp the handles and turn. The wheels are also visible, so the user knows right away that it’s working. While our product does froth milk to some extent, it fails in comparison to the electric frothers we tested out. In addition, it only works in cups with wide openings. To improve the device, I’d lengthen the handles, make the wheels smaller, and incorporate some mechanism (similar to those used by bicycles) to make the wheels spin faster.