Week 1.1: Good Design: Breville Convection Oven

Alright, week 1 is a 4 part submission. For the first part, I am supposed to pick a design I love and use hopefully every day and write about what I think makes it awesome. I thought I would pick my Breville Toaster Oven. As anyone who knows me is aware, I love to cook! A couple years ago, my husband got me this amazing convection oven (see right) which is my favorite piece of kitchen electronics. The thing is easy to use, clean, and has held up to years of daily use and abuse. It also has the added benefit of being energy efficient so it saves us roughly $100/month. But honestly, besides the money and reliability, this piece of equipment is just incredibly thoughtfully designed. There's magnets that help close the door and open the baking shelf so you don't accidentally burn yourself taking stuff out (an old pet peeve for years). The knobs are metal and swivel so they're useful, but still don't break off. Everything is cleanly organized in the menus similar to an oven/cook-book so you just enter the function, temp, and time. My old toaster oven had all these weird settings like rolls or popcorn on it which I never figured out. And our oven is just painful to clean. Nothing is wasted on the Breville and everything is as if someone personally walked into my kitchen and saw what I needed before I did. This to me is design at it's best. A level often aimed for and rarely achieved. Something so useful you can't imagine living without it. What is a great design in your life?