Panjkolakh
Spice cubes to restore confidence and increase self-sufficiency of the visually impaired in the kitchen and make cooking hassle-free.
Project by: Anna Abraham, Davis Chris, Rhea Pinto, Sonal Soni
Introduction
- India is home to 62 million blind people of which 54 million have low vision and 8 million are blind.
- The biggest challenge is working in a new kitchen.
- The visually impaired find it hard to measure spices and know which spices they are using since most of the spices are in powdered form. While cooking they roam around with a towel to wipe their hands after using the spices.
- What unites them all is the fact that they all want to be seamlessly assimilated into society kitchen is one of the most challenging and dangerous areas of the home for people with all types of disabilities, especially those with vision impairment.
Problem Statement
“How might we make a product or system where the visually impaired can measure spices correctly such that it doesn’t exclude them from the rest.”
Primary Research
We visited a teacher who teaches at Victoria Memorial School for the Blind. Since the instructor herself was blind she was able to give us the pertinent information about her struggles in the kitchen environment. She confirmed the problems of spice measuring and handing spices in the kitchen. The visually impaired find it hard to measure spices and know which spices they are using since most of the spices are in powdered form. While cooking they often roam around with a towel to wipe their hands after using the spices but there is room for error and since they cannot see spillage or spice residue it can cause injury.
While observing her environment we also realised that the blind school didn’t use a lot of technologically advanced gadgets so that dissuaded us from going to high-tech with our solution.
Ideation
While we first began to try to find the blind person alternative to the average spice “dabba” in every household we soon realised that maybe the solution didn’t lie in how the spice was dispensed but in the form of the spice in the first place!
The Idea
We asked moms, chefs and cooking enthusiasts about their spice usage and came to the conclusion that minimum quantity when measuring spices was 1/4th tsp or 1.42 grams. Since the visually disabled didn’t have the liberty to ‘eyeball’ these measurements we worked on the idea of having pre-measured spice cubes that help the blind use spices without dirtying their hands and worrying about having used too much or too little.
We worked on multiple iterations of formula & form. Our main struggles were:
1) Consistency: Avoiding fall out once the cube was set
2) Potency: Maintaining the flavour & strength of the spice
3) Shape: Keeping the form user & storage friendly
4) Dissolvable: Should be easily dissolved in oil
Panjkolakh means 5 spices in Sanskrit which are the 5 initial variants of product- Chilli powder, Turmeric, Coriander Powder, Garam Masala and cumin powder
Heres how it works
Step 1:
Locate the spice cubes
Step 2:
Take the required amount and put it in your dish
Step 3:
And viola!
Now you’ll finally know how much masala you put in your tadka!
Future
Panjkolakh is currently in the process of being patented our future vision is to expand from individual spices to spice mixes for an easier cooking experience.
Thank you.
