NPR had a review of Kitchen Stories this morning. It's an independent movie from Norway that's currently only showing in NY and LA, but it sounds like a movie any user-centered designer or ethnographer might find especially interesting.

Here's a detailed synopsis from MovieWeb:

In post-World War II Scandinavia, home science is a booming industry and Sweden's Home Research Institute is conducting studies aimed at standardizing the average household kitchen along the lines of an ultra-efficient assembly-line model. Over time, the researchers discover that simply by organizing the kitchens workstations properly, based on the layout of factories, the benefits (in terms of time, money and physical exertion) for a household could be enormous. Or, as a Swedish ad for the new ideal kitchen of the time put it: "Instead of a housewife having to walk what is the equivalent of Sweden to the Congo during a year of cooking, she now only needs to walk to northern Italy in order to get food on the table."

After thoroughly mapping the Swedish housewifes behavior in the kitchen, scientists at the Institute feel ready to venture beyond their own geographic and gender-based limitations. So, in the early 50s they send 18 observers to the rural farming district of Landstad, Norway, with its surplus of bachelors, to study the kitchen routines of single men.

In order to be on 24-hour call, the observers live in egg-shaped pea-green campers outside each subjects house. From custom-made observation chairs strategically placed high above each kitchen, they study and take notes. The observers must be allowed to come and go as they please, and under no circumstances must they be spoken to or included in kitchen activities. Immediately regretful of having signed up to be observed, Isak (who thought that by doing so he would be given a horse) makes it ridiculously difficult for Folke to analyze him. But small kindnesses whittle away at the wall between them, and they embark on a tentative friendship, much to the chagrin of Folke's by-the-book supervisor, who has zero tolerance for any deviations in this "scientific" inquiry.

DC's not exactly Podunk, Iowa, so perhaps it will show up here. (As an aside, I did not know that there are five Podunk's in the US. None are in Iowa.)

05:51 PM | linkme | home