Modeled in Solidworks, rendered in Keyshot.
Cooking without Sight
Tactile single burner with ventilation lid for home cooks with blindness
NC State University, MID
Sponsored Studio
Spring 2026
11 weeks
Sponsored by
Guided and critiqued by designers at
Stovetop cooking depends on sight at nearly every step: finding the burner, centering a pan, adjusting temperature, and judging food doneness. People with blindness cook with risky workarounds, such as hovering a hand over active burners to determine which one they just turned on.
This compact induction burner and smart lid enables home cooks with blindness to feel and hear their way through the cooking process. Two knobs read temperature and timer settings aloud, and a fan-assisted funnel in the lid moves steam away from your hand while adding ingredients.
Context
Workaround: Stovetop interface with bump dots.
Sponsor: Ablr, workforce development training organization.
Brief: reduce barriers for people with visual impairment.
Point of Contact: Ablr intern with blindness shared insights.
Frustration: cooking with blindness.
Problem
Blind home cooks need a safe, non-visual way to:
align cookware and knobs
transfer hot ingredients
determine food doneness
to lower burn risks and afford independent stovetop cooking.
Spatial
Alignment
Transfer
Alignment
Evaluative
Alignment
Current: bump dots and gadgets address symptoms.
Concepts: student projects not sold on the market.
Trends: Induction paired with tactile navigation, multisensory feedback, and modular parts.
No system-rooted solution for cooking without sight.
Cook pasta with meat sauce
Market
Ideation
AI generated ideation
Physical & Solidworks Models
Delivered Solution
Workaround: Stovetop interface with bump dots.
Sponsor: Ablr, workforce development training organization.
Brief: reduce barriers for people with visual impairment.
Point of Contact: Ablr intern with blindness shared insights.
Burner
Temperature knob: raised, beside the burner. Press to hear the setting.
Timer knob: lower, beside the status light. Press to hear the time remaining.
Fail-safe: remove the temperature knob and the burner turns off; remove the timer knob and the timer cancels.
One button: hold to turn on or off; press once to hear the temperature at the center of the pan.
Funnel: sits over the center of the burner for adding ingredients.
Fan: blows steam away from your hand.
Lids: glass to steam, mesh to vent.
Handle: detaches to clean or swap lids, and charges while in use.
Smart Lid
Takeaways
Autonomy over convenience: designing so someone can do it themselves is different from doing it for them.
Flat interfaces fail: so many workarounds exist, and so few real solutions.
Describing the world: it made me look outside myself and describe the things around me.
Next: a 3D-printed prototype, then testing with cooks who are blind.
