An Appliance Door Virtual Modeling For User Experience Design

Domestic appliance are widely used in all countries. During the design phase, it is very important to take advantage of new virtual prototyping technologies in order to improve the user expectations and put the feeling of the user with the device in the centre of the design. The paper deals with the complete simulation of the opening of the front door of an appliance like a refrigerator or an oven. The process is simulated with the use of ad-hoc built program that uses a combination of experimental parameters and virtual fluid dynamic simulations. Each moment involved during the opening of the door is evaluated and a comprehensive explanation of each of them is reported. The entire solving process is parametrized in order to use it in an iteration loop for eventually optimization of the User Experience and the comfort during the opening of the front door. A fridge case study is described and discussed.