Embedded UI/UX & Motion Design
Steininger M.POD
Designed a touch interface for a 32" smart kitchen surface, built to survive oil, water, and dust.
- Role
- Designed the M.POD touch interface; ran the UX research and worked directly with engineering to design around the hardware.
- Outcome
- Shipped in Steininger's FOLD kitchen, which won the Red Dot (2019), German Design Award and Iconic Award (2020), and is still part of the luxury collection today.
Context
The M.POD is a 32-inch touchscreen work surface built into luxury kitchens by Austrian designer Martin Steininger. It controls smart home functions, recipes, entertainment and more, all from a single glass surface flush with the countertop.
The challenge
This wasn’t a phone or a tablet. It was an Android-powered computer living inside a kitchen, and everything we knew about touch interfaces had to be questioned. We started with UX research to understand what people actually need from a computer while cooking, not what we assumed they needed. What came back shaped everything: simpler flows, larger touch targets, a completely different interaction model.
Then came the physical reality. Dust, oil, water and heat all affect how a finger registers on glass. We worked directly with the engineering team to understand the hardware’s limits and design around them, testing and iterating until the interface was reliable under real kitchen conditions.
The trade-off
A kitchen surface isn’t a phone, and oil, water, heat and dust all change how a finger registers on glass. The safe move was to port familiar touch patterns; instead I threw them out and designed around the hardware’s real limits, simpler flows, larger targets, a different interaction model, trading convention for an interface that actually held up under real kitchen conditions.
The result
A UI that feels at home in one of Austria’s most premium kitchen brands. The M.POD shipped as a flagship product and is still part of Steininger’s luxury collection today. The FOLD kitchen it features in went on to win the Red Dot Award (2019) and both the German Design Award and Iconic Award (2020). A product where the software is as considered as the hardware it runs on.