Propose a new possibility of humanization for the residential bathroom scene.

In mid-to-late 2023, we received a need to redefine a traditional manufacturing brand to reimagine the possibilities of the bathroom cabinet category.

At present, bathroom cabinets are generally divided into finished cabinets and customized cabinets, corresponding to two completely different channel composition and demand scenarios. Based on the long-term strategy of domestic brands, our customers hope to develop a humanized new product beyond the basic functions in the category of finished cabinets, so that bathroom cabinets can be separated from the traditional basic storage functions and endowed with more humanism and space aesthetic decoration capabilities.

In order to have a deeper understanding of the characteristics of this category, we visited the real production line of the customer's bathroom cabinet factory to understand the production process and technological form of bathroom cabinet products, and even personally designed and assembled a wooden cabinet (which later became the window cabinet of our new office), and had a deeper understanding of the product structure and technological difficulties of bathroom cabinet products.

Bathroom cabinet products are different from toilets or shower systems. They are a composite category between functional products and decorative furniture, with storage functions, washing functions, lighting functions and home decoration attributes.

The materials of bathroom cabinets also cover almost all mainstream material types on the market, such as wood, metal profiles and hinges, ceramics and rock plates, plastic parts, glass parts, etc. This also leads to extremely complicated and complicated supply chain integration processes and highly manual manufacturing bottlenecks in the production and manufacturing of bathroom cabinet products.

In view of this situation, combined with our research and search experience, we found that the current mainstream product solution direction in the industry is to make products through a high degree of division of labor integration, that is, spare parts suppliers are committed to the vertical planning and development of subdivided standard parts, while brands prefer to integrate assembly.

This model effectively solves the bottleneck of the scale effect of the bathroom cabinet category, but also makes the product competitiveness of this category more transparent and flat: as the supplier's research and development orientation for a single accessory tends to be more standardized and cost control, it will not think about the user's complete use process from the perspective of the entire product system.

In the existing category manufacturing model we have found, these generic parts flowing to the brand side can only constitute a fundamental difference in configuration, resulting in the competitive dimension between the brand side is always limited to the height of style and supply chain capability, it is extremely difficult to define the true sense of long-term competitiveness.

How to build a product force with both long-term doctrine and short-term landability from a systematic perspective has become the key to this project.

Through the restoration of the user's moving line in the bathroom space, we reproduce some of the demand possibilities of some representative user portraits. And through the collection and analysis of a series of real questionnaires, supplemented by the QFD methodology in project management discipline and AHP level analysis method, the internal scoring evaluation was carried out together with the client team. Based on the real market status and resource reserves faced by the internal distributors and business personnel of the client, some practical opportunities were obtained.

We try to explore and sort out the product creativity from the idea of optimizing the storage behavior-strengthening the storage function-explicit functional visual hammer-closing the demand for the first principle.

Direction 01

A new storage space is added to the front of the bathroom cabinet door panel to facilitate users to place objects used at higher frequencies, while objects stored at lower frequencies are placed in drawers to prevent dust falling.

When users take high-frequency towels, toiletries and toiletries, they only need to bend down to take them directly, and do not need to open the drawer back to search. However, long-term storage of spare consumables are placed in the drawer to achieve better frequency storage effect.

For this new cabinet structure, we made a 1:10 miniature model to verify the process realizability;
In the process of verification, we found that because the front door panel was retracted to reserve the storage space, the relevant structure of the front upper part of the cabinet body would interfere with the wash basin bladder installed at the back of the cabinet top (only 400mm of space reserved for the basin bladder and faucet installation position), which may lead to the scheme matching the basin bladder of customized size during the landing process.

In order to solve the above problems, we revised part of the structure in the next version of the model: we lowered the height of the storage space of the front door panel, avoiding a part of the space for the common size of the basin, and at the same time, the cabinet frame made certain structural adjustments to match the new functional purpose;

The beam part of the cabinet body is changed from "one" to "U" in order to achieve reasonable space planning without destroying the integrity of the appearance.

Direction 02

A double-layer slide drawer is provided for the bathroom cabinet. A tray with heating function is installed at the upper slide part to place and heat the clothes changed after the shower and the towel for wiping the body, thus providing users with a warmer and more comfortable shower experience closed loop.

The warm clothes tray is placed in the upper draw layer, which is easier to access.

Direction 03

Redesign the exterior of the stereotyped bathroom cabinet door panels into a fireplace image with dynamic firelight, providing a unique warm look to the bathroom space.

The product form we conceive may be more inclined to the customized bathroom cabinet of high-end private house. In such a scene, the target audience has a higher pursuit of emotional value and furniture aesthetic elements beyond demand, and especially favors the creation of atmosphere.

Direction 04

The beauty makeup bathroom cabinet is specially designed for women who use bathroom cabinets at high frequency. Apart from using a large number of common beauty makeup parts, the biggest creative point focuses on providing a modular stool for long-term makeup.

Considering the user's life trajectory, we also proposed whether the mobile module under the cabinet can be a temporary diaper table and dressing table for newborns in addition to the stool and mobile storage cabinet. Although this is not the most suitable solution for mother and infant, it is not an attractive auxiliary concept.

02 Conversion Strategy 」

Due to the particularity of the bathroom cabinet category, for the sake of long-term doctrine, the consensus between us and the customer is not to output the scheme for the specific configuration of single-product products, but to refine and present the details based on some concepts recognized by the customer. These presentations may be more ground-to-ground and detailed polishing in the process dimension, or they may be presentations in the direction of the picture and story in the marketing dimension.

The main concept of flame bathroom cabinet is more inclined to the creation of atmosphere and the provision of emotional value, so we think that the packaging of product follow-up concept and the presentation of product scheme should be more inclined to the dimension of story and visualization. Therefore, the direction of our scheme is more inclined to the composition of the picture and the presentation of the visual delivery scene.

The concept of partition storage is more inclined to functionality and apartment type adaptability, so we have focused on the bathroom storage list of small-sized residents and restored the specific size ratio for the mainstream bathroom cabinet specifications of small-sized residents.

At the same time, we also deliberated the step-back form of the scheme: we canceled the front concave storage area, but retained the function of the handle as a towel rack or shelf. This scheme has less changes to the product structure, lower proofing difficulty, and is a suitable concept extension direction for the entrusting party.

In view of the concept of heating and warming tray, we have provided a refinement scheme closer to the general module in the refinement stage: it is smaller in size, more concentrated in heat, can accommodate enough personal clothes for one shower, and can adapt to finished bathroom cabinets of basically all sizes.

While such a solution can be adapted to the ground faster, it is also an opportunity direction for the principal of the manufacturing side to provide cooperation to the major brands as an exclusive general part after the establishment of barriers.

In terms of technical applications, the bathroom category has its own uniqueness, and direct transplantation of technical solutions from other industries or categories is often not feasible. As far as tolerance control is concerned, bathroom cabinets are restricted by many factors such as raw material characteristics, processing equipment accuracy and manual operation, and tolerances are extremely difficult to control accurately. This is not only about the appearance of coordination, more directly affect the assembly process.

This means that the simple application of external technology cannot meet the production needs of bathroom cabinets. In the process of floor-to-floor transformation of design concepts, we must rely on the bathroom cabinet industry's own mature technical solutions to achieve innovative breakthroughs.

Therefore, by tapping the technical resources of the bathroom cabinet industry, we have found that the mature technical principle of mirror cabinet heating and defogging in the industry has something in common with the mature product of glass panel warm cutting board in the underlying technology and structural stack. From the perspective of cross-border technology application, we think this is an opportunity point to promote new categories.

We put the door panel of the intelligent mirror cabinet with defogging function flat and equipped with guide rails to make it a pull-out warming board module embedded in the main cabinet cabinet. In this way, it not only solves the tolerance and assembly problems, but also does not add additional production and maintenance burden. It successfully creates a technical prototype of warm clothes function that meets the needs of users, and significantly improves the practicability and user experience of bathroom cabinets.

In addition, combined with our design experience in the field of household appliances, especially in the subdivision of environmental appliances, we have also put forward a more cross-border and bolder idea: we hope to install a through-flow heater in the rear space of the bathroom cabinet, which is vacant due to the length limitation of the guide rail, and install a grid-type clothing heating tray at the front end.
When placing clothes, warm air can heat clothes to the ideal temperature more quickly than contact heating. When clothes are not placed, warm air can be blown out through the grid cylindrical gap of the tray to realize the function of drying the bathroom floor and rapid heating of the bathroom as a whole.
We are very confident that such a conceptual scheme can achieve the result of cross-border integration that breaks the shackles of product categories and brings users a purchase and use experience of 1 1>2. However, due to the relatively difficult safety certification procedures and compatibility technology development process, it does not match the conditions and resources currently possessed by the entrusting party.
Therefore, this concept was finally retained internally and no proposal was made. However, after communicating with the client and obtaining consent, we also shared the presentation this time.

In the market pattern of bathroom cabinet category, the cost dilemma has always been a serious challenge for the industry. In the case of plastic parts, the development process involves high initial investment in mold production, material development and process optimization.

However, in the full life cycle of bathroom cabinet items, due to market competition, consumer price sensitivity and product replacement speed and other factors, limited sales and difficult to achieve premium space, making it difficult to get a full return on the development costs of this part of the plastic components. This not only compresses the profit space of the enterprise, but also limits the pace of product innovation to a certain extent.

In the face of this dilemma, we have defined a new product category of "fireplace bathroom cabinet" for our customers. The core of this innovative concept is to skillfully use the mature water light technology principle to transform "light", an indispensable element in the bathroom space, with "flame", a unique presentation means with great home attributes and rich emotional value. By simulating the light and shadow of the flame, it creates a warm, comfortable and unique bathroom atmosphere for users, which satisfies consumers' pursuit of high quality and personalized bathroom experience.

On the eve of the conclusion of the project, after many discussions and communication between the two sides of the project, our customer of Party A drew up two product concepts, "warm tray drawer" and "flame fireplace bathroom cabinet", as the two core product concepts applied to the production of finished cabinets and the design of customized cabinets.
After the analytical work on the computer, although it is a pre-installed large-scale product, we still simulate and make a miniature model for more in-depth analysis and experience, and more intuitively experience, understand and conceive the optimized space of bathroom cabinet products. The relevant product landing plan will cover different specific products of the customer during the period of 25-27 years, and will be transformed and presented at the corresponding pace on KBC every year.





"Conclusion 」

Compared with more regular and innovative projects we have handled, due to the particularity of cooperative customer categories and the catalysis of the organizational structure of the existing functional departments of customers, we play more roles as a front-end middle-end (product definition/user research/advance research and development & design) in this project, which is more based on the breadth of cross-border and the understanding of users' essential demands, from a new perspective, we provided our clients with the definition of new sub-categories and the pre-research of new technology platforms, and delivered practical technology development verification, patent layout and supplier sourcing direction.
At present, the whole bathroom cabinet industry is in a state of low barriers, homogenization of selling points, competition for the market by rhythm, and somewhat similar to the fast-moving consumer goods industry. We always look forward to witnessing the emergence of a product form with long-term competitiveness and giving some new discussion topics to this industry. From the perspective of cross-border innovators, we also expect that these ideas can give the industry some conceptual inspiration with certain reference value. At the same time, we also welcome more vertical professional predecessors in the bathroom industry to guide and communicate.





Design Team
KAI, MENG

Client
MIJIC



About Us

CKC is a cross-border innovative design company that provides multi-category and diversified design services. Our main creators are all from the top 500 companies in the home appliance industry. They embrace unlimited innovative project cooperation with an open mind, and always insist on exporting the value of long-termism in the process. We look forward to emerging as a "professional innovative design company" and creating forward-looking extreme output in every industry.

Opportunity
If you expect to try some more subversive and forward-looking innovative solutions in future product planning, and hope that these solutions can purposefully and systematically transform certain long-term landing values; Or you are updating and iterating your product line and need family-based product PI standard formulation and application-based design transformation. These are all project cooperation opportunities that we are good at and expect. Please contact us.

Contact Us

Chen Kai

Principal Designer Project Management Leader

kai_chan@foxmail.com

18675452915