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The new Invoq oven wins prestigious Red Dot design award
Winner of The “Red Dot: Best of the Best” Design Award
30 May 2023
The Invoq oven series wins the exclusive *Red Dot award in the category Best of the Best. Invoq fuses industrial design with digital user experience creating an innovative global foodservice brand.
The Red Dot award will be officially presented on 19 June 2023 at a gala in Essen, Germany.
*The “Red Dot: Best of the Best” is awarded for groundbreaking design and is the highest award in the competition. This prize is reserved for the best products in a category. The jury awarded it to: Invoq Combi Oven Series
I am very proud of this award, which emphasises that we have succeeded with our innovative design approach and that we have created a user experience matching our customers’ demands. At the same time, we have lifted ourselves from having a traditional business setup with global OEM dealers to strategically involving them in our open innovation model, which enables us to now position ourselves at the very top with a global joint product brand consisting of a complete oven series for the professional kitchen and foodservice industry,
explains former President of HOUNÖ, Morten Ammentorp Nielsen, who just announced his departure May 4, 2023, after 14-years of leadership.
– Morten Ammentorp Nielsen, former President of HOUNÖ, concludesThis recognition marks the culmination of a series of strategic efforts that began nearly a decade ago including a successfully implemented collaborative innovation forum strategy and the creation of a powerful global product brand bringing me a great sense of pride and accomplishment when now handing over this legacy.
New on the market, but six years under development
From the start, Danish product innovation studio, Design-People, have been part of the open innovation model, which has required close collaboration with HOUNÖ’s OEM partners – now all part of the innovation forum called Innovation Circle – to bring segment expertise and local market knowledge straight into the design studio.
Innovation Cicrle
The Innovation Circle consists of six premium food service brands: Lincat, Levens Middleby, Blodgett, BKI, Dieta and HOUNÖ.
The goal has been to create a product with a more timeless design that can continue in daily use for many years to come. With inputs from an open innovation forum, where primary customers and various users defined the requirements for design and functionality, we have jointly managed to develop a new modular product architecture,
says Henrik Mathiassen, founder and design director at Design-People.
Six years have been spent wisely developing and refining even the smallest detail, so that the new oven will fit into every imaginable professional kitchen; from restaurant to supermarket, from bakery to canteen.
– explains Henrik Mathiassen, Founder and Design Director at Design-People .Design is not only about beautifying, but to a large extent also about improving. Determined efforts have been put into minimise joints to ensure better hygiene. The glass front surfaces are smooth and easy to clean. They maximise the view of the food items, invite the user to look inside, and at the same time create a natural transition to the smartphone-intuitive operating experience. Even the door handle is designed to achieve an inviting, haptic sensory experience of form and functionality, while the mould casting makes it easier to clean,
And for the service technician, access is made simple from only one side of the oven, and if the door needs to be right-hinged, this is solved in terms of design by being able to rotate it 180°.
– Henrik Mathiassen
Responsible product design
Leaving a reduced climate footprint has been in focus from the very first sketches: from a production perspective in the modular product architecture and automation processes to the oven’s energy and water consumption and further to reducing food waste.
It is a process and not something we have neither finished nor will we finish. But sustainability has become a clear agenda in our company and a focal point for our constant development and improvements,
explains newly appointed President of HOUNÖ, Rasmus Vingaard Larsen.
– Rasmus Vingaard Larsen statesOf course, there is a clear competitive advantage in early-stage adaption, but it is basically our responsibility to set the bar high,
In the interaction between achieving the modular industrial design and the scaling potential in production, unique opportunities for innovation have arisen, as the design solution had to cover at least six different oven sizes as well as several different functional combinations.
A collaboration with the Technical University of Denmark and one of the leading researchers in the world on product modularisation, Niels Henrik Mortensen, has enabled a better coverage of market requirements from various segments and at the same time kept the complexity low internally in HOUNÖ using smart technical scaling principles. This makes production more efficient and amenable to automation, and at the same time more sustainable for the company’s service partners related to maintenance of the ovens, as they need fewer parts in stock and can easily replace wear components.
Sustainability is absolutely required in all product development today and has long been an integral part of our approach to product design. The 100% sustainable high-tech product does not exist – yet – but it is all about constantly improving, seeking out learning and finding new ways. It’s a journey we need all manufacturers to embark on, and an important part of the solution is design that can last for many, many years.
– Henrik Mathiassen, Founder and Design Director at Design-People .The great sustainable gains with Invoq were only possible due to the close collaboration with HOUNÖ’s engineering team, who really pushed the envelope to reduce components by more than 50% and to optimise energy consumption for daily product use, reducing it up to 70%, where we find the really big wins.