Sushi Clippers

My partner and I both relate to the same issue when it comes to eating sushi, it falls apart in your chopsticks or fork as you go to
eat it. Our design needs to fit the criteria of practicality, aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, and easily accessible. We desire
something more on the simple side so that you don’t have to think when you go to use it. To make this design we searched deeper
into the problem and brainstormed ideas. The challenge is that the chopsticks are often just too thin so the sushi isn’t
able to balance and will fall off.  A second challenge with chopsticks is that they cannot hold under the sushi so it can just drop out and fall apart. Based on our diagnosis of these problems, we designed several new clipper concepts by iterating and improving the design three times. The main idea is for a clipper that is thicker than chopsticks and can clip underneath the sushi so that it won’t fall apart. Each of our designs feature minor differences. The first one is thicker than normal chopsticks and can clip under sushi, but is made of metal. The second one is also thicker than chopsticks and can clip under the sushi but it is made of silicone so that the grip is stronger than the metal one. The final design is the same as the second clipper but has a feature called “teeth” that allows for a better grip on the sushi relative to the metal clippers.

 

 

Feedback from peers:

  • How do you eat the sushi when it’s on the clip?
  • I like the idea of the sushi clippers because other people had similar problems but yours clipped under, not on top of the sushi.
  • I like how you drew 3D.
  • Would it be easy to scoop?

When my partner and I originally created our designs for our sushi clippers the designed called for only one material to be used for the clippers – metal – but after the feedback from one of the teachers he asked if there could possibly be more than one material and whether those materials would benefit the overall outcome of our product. With this feedback we decided to change the material of the clippers from metal to silicone to provide better grip onto the sushi making it easier to latch onto. Another feature we decided to add to our design based off more feedback from teachers was the fact that you would just have to balance the sushi if it didn’t have anything securing the sushi from the bottom. To fix this problem we added on “Teeth” to the bottom edge of the clippers for extra support and to make it possible to balance the sushi. The last piece of relevant feedback we received was questions on how to eat the sushi once on the clip and whether it would be easy to scoop. To eat the sushi when its on the clippers you simply un-click the clippers from the top, and then you don’t really scoop the sushi, you clip it up. Overall we integrated most of the feedback received and ended up making changes to our design that I strongly think benefited our design.

This picture is before we received feedback and made changes

This picture is the final product after all of our feedback and all of our changes.

 

Our design has a variety of pros and fewer cons. The strengths in our design include clips under the sushi for a better
grip rather than having to use chopsticks to hold the sushi and it falling beneath the chopsticks and coming apart. Another strength of our design is that picking up the sushi won’t take the time and concentration that it usually does with chopsticks. One final strength of our design is that the sushi can have a more smooth and practical travel pathway to the mouth. Normally, when you eat sushi it often ends up being very unbalanced and takes way too long to eat one piece. But with this new product it will make it more simple, smoother, and won’t take long at all (around 3 seconds).

The weakness with this design is the possibility that when unclipping from the sushi the clippers may get stuck because the teeth may catch on one another. This possible outcome is unlikely. The materials we used to make this design was silicone and some sort of wire or toothpick to be the base shape of the clippers so that it doesn’t just flop apart. Sushi clippers can help satisfy any sushi lover who wants to avoid wasting their sushi crumbling apart a table. If you want to eat your sushi in 3 seconds or less, have control over each and every piece, avoid  worrying about the sushi coming apart, and in general, enjoy a better sushi eating experience then these sushi clippers are the perfect match for you!