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Ryan Jongwoo Choi's No-Spill Magic Tray Concept

By Rain Noe - July 26, 2012

in Food

Here's an interesting concept: UK-based design student Ryan Jongwoo Choi's anti-dish-dropping Magic Tray concept. Choi wanted to design a tray that would make it easier for restaurant servers to carry dishes, bowls and plates with little danger of spilling them. The Magic Tray thus has interior magnets, as do the dishes and vessels themselves; hence everything sticks fast to the tray.

Choi's design cleverly calls for springs inside the tray that, when the tray is set down, release the magnets from the underside of the top surface of the tray. Thus the dishes and such can then be removed.

There are a couple of potential issues, like with the design calling for the embedding of magnets in the undersides of the dishes themselves. In your average restaurant's kitchen, the line cooks are usually separated from the servers by a row of pass-through stainless steel shelves. The cooks place the finished dishes onto the shelves, and the server retrieves them. If those shelves are ferritic stainless steel, there's going to be magnetic attraction, and yanking a dish strongly enough to break the attraction could conceivably cause a problem. If the shelves are austenitic (non-magnetic) stainless, no problem at all.

The other thing I got to thinking was that even if the vessels remained on a tilted tray, the real danger is the contents of those vessels spilling out of them.

Still, I think the idea has merit and I'd love to play around with one to test it out. Oh wait a second, no I wouldn't. I hated working in restaurants. But here's the concept vid:

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Johathan S

12 years ago

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It is a good concept since the student brought something new to design and maybe even sparked new ideas, but a few simple sketches would be enough to successively present the concept. Instead of polishing his presentation images and video he could have spent more time on research, even just thinking about his own ideas more deeply would have yielded a better learning process.
It is apparent from looking his portfolio, by having "complete" concept presentations, the student can throw everyone of his design concepts at every possible design competition, and repeat as long as each design (1) fits the competition criteria and (2) hasn't already won an award, which then he is prohibited from registering that concept at another competition.
The student probably understand more about manufacturing processes, engineering limitations, and material science than a lot of design students, but developing a comprehensive design process is just as import, if not more so; and design school and design teachers should constantly convey the importance of both.
It is irresponsible if we keep talking about designing for less, process and system design, and how we can use design thinking to solve social problem, but promote designers who are skilled at creating comfort colored and aesthetically pleasing garbage.
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Damien

12 years ago

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It's an interesting tech exercise, but also a fantastic example of what happens when you design without doing any research first.

Anyway, I'm sure there's a need for a mechanism like this somewhere in the world, but definitely not in restaurants.
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Rafael Morgan

12 years ago

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This design is a bit pointless.

Whenever you tilt the tray, the content of the vessels would spill anyway, independently if the vessels are magnetically attached to it or not.

If the point is to prevent the vessels from slipping, a rubber or silicone surface would do the same job, at least at acceptable tilting degrees, and would be considerably cheaper.

Anyway, this work is relevant for a student. Keep thinking outside the box Ryan, you are on the right path.
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Tim

12 years ago

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I agree and don't see this in restaurants but at home I think this could have merit..esp if you have young kids. We give our 3 year old a tray when she is snacking on the couch. Her sippy cup and bowl of goldfish slide all over the place when the tray is on her lap. I can see this working for an application like that.
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Greg

12 years ago

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Seems like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Restaurants that would spend the money on more expensive serving trays certainly wouldn't be using polypropylene cups and dishes. Not only would they be attracted to the stainless-steel pass through shelves but everything that's metal on the customers table; silverware, salt and pepper shakers, oil and vinegar caddy, keys and cellphones, etc. Anyone who's worked in a restaurant knows you're carrying your tray in one hand and opening doors, carrying tray stands and serving with the other meaning the magnets would never activate. In the restaurants I've worked in and in my own home I've never used a tray where the items I put on it were sliding around because I walk like a normal human being. Any accident that would cause someone to spill the items on a normal tray is going to be violent enough to spill everything on this tray as well.
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