The idea for the design that earned UL Lafayette student Silvana Zaldivar a trip to the International Home + Housewares show in Chicago next month began with a fractured arm.
During a visit home to El Salvador, the senior industrial design major watched her injured grandmother struggle to spoon batter from a bowl with one arm.
“So, I tried to bake something using only one hand, and I was having a hard time, and wasting a lot of batter,” Zaldivar said in a recent interview.
Her solution is the Suma Mixing Bowl, designed to let a baker mix and pour ingredients with one hand. It contains a built-in, crescent-shaped “spatula” that can be pushed across the inside of the bowl. As the spatula is pushed, the bowl holds firmly in a slanted position thanks to a special base. The base is made of a thermoplastic elastomer, a combination of plastic and rubber that helps the bowl “grip” the surface it is resting on.
The specially designed bowl is meant to accommodate users with disabilities, or who are multitasking as they cook, Zaldivar said. It also offers a more efficient method for “scraping a bowl of leftover ingredients,” she added.
Zaldivar began tinkering with the project at UL Lafayette, first with sketches, then computer modeling, and then by completing a plastic prototype.
Jerry Malinowski, coordinator of UL Lafayette’s industrial design program, provided invaluable advice and input, she said. So did several graduates of the University’s industrial design program, who offered design tips and suggested ways to keep potential production costs low.
“UL gives you the foundation, but it’s up to us students make something out of our work,” Zaldivar said.
In December, she entered the Suma Mixing Bowl in the International Housewares Student Design Competition. It was among 11 designs singled out from a total of 246 submissions from college students in the United States and other countries.
The Suma Mixing Bowl earned an honorable mention and the opportunity to be displayed at the International Home + Housewares show, to be held March 7-10.
About 50,000 people are expected to attend the trade show, where Zaldivar will get to promote her product to potential manufacturers, and hobnob with industry professionals.
It won’t be the first time her design skills have drawn attention.
In the summer of 2014, Zaldivar completed an internship at clothing and accessories manufacturer Fossil in Richardson, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. She spent three months at the company’s headquarters, working on women’s watch designs.
Along with kitchenware, Zaldivar is keenly interested in clothing accessories, particularly ones that combine form and function.
A thin, sleek leather handbag she designed can be folded like a piece of origami into any of several shapes, but leaves plenty of room for objects such as keys, a wallet and even a cell phone. The handbag is sold in her native El Salvador.
“Silvana pushes the envelope,” Malinowski said. “She looks for opportunities, and takes advantage of them. She goes beyond the norm, and she has been very successful because of that.”
Learn more about Zaldivar and her work at .
Photo info: Industrial design student Silvana Zaldivar works on a prototype (top) of her Suma Mixing Bowl (inset). The design earned Zalvidar a trip to the International Home + Housewares show in Chicago next month.