Success Story: Miele Living Tomorrow 2030

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125 years of premium brand & innovation leadership

Miele stands for the highest quality and technological progress. As an innovation leader in the household appliance industry, the company is actively shaping the digital transformation. Miele has been developing connected appliances since 1999. In its strategic pre-development division, Advanced Design, Miele has been conducting exploratory projects since 2009. Since 2014, the Design Centre has been working on virtual assistance systems for the household and cooking. The aim of these projects is to understand how physical and digital worlds can be seamlessly connected to meet the needs of modern society and continue setting new standards with Miele products in the future.

Living Tomorrow 2030:
A glimpse Into the future

In 2019, Miele decided to become a partner of the Living Tomorrow 2030 innovation platform in Brussels. The "Living Lab" at Living Tomorrow brings together companies and experts to develop visions for the future of living and working. The goal is to collaboratively create smart solutions that improve everyday life in the future. For Miele, the project offers an opportunity to test digital assistant systems for households under real-world conditions and gain valuable insights for future product development. Beyond that, the project aims to reinforce the company’s position as an innovation leader and strengthen trust in the Miele brand.

From idea to integration

At the start of the project, there was a broad range of potential use cases and product innovations emerging from the Design Center. Throughout multiple project phases, these use cases were iteratively refined and evaluated in terms of cost, time, and feasibility aspects. A creative, workshop-based concept phase was followed by an initial ‘triage’ of the use cases with direct feedback from Miele's executive board. In the subsequent phase, final proof-of-concepts were crafted based on specific product requirements and plans for technical realisation. The most promising concepts were then developed using the Scrum framework during the main development phase and integrated into the Innovation Campus once the Living Tomorrow building was completed.

Intelligent kitchen assistance

One of these use cases is the Nutrition Assistant, for which slashwhy contributed to frontend and backend development as well as UX/UI design. Taking into account personal preferences, dislikes and dietary guidelines, recipes are suggested and meal plans are created that are tailored to the needs of the entire family. Integration with the Apple Health Framework is also prepared to incorporate fitness data into future recipe recommendations. With the digital cooking assistant (Cooking Companion), current Miele 7000 series appliances can be controlled, automating recipe preparation. The induction cooktop features an integrated scale that ensures precise ingredient measurement. Slashwhy developed the signal processing solution for this data.

Multimodal & interactive operation

The nutrition assistant can be operated via an innovative, multimodal interface. It is controlled by voice, gestures or touch - without requiring additional devices like tablets. The interface is projected directly onto the kitchen countertop, allowing for intuitive use. This interactive solution enables seamless integration of assistance systems into everyday kitchen routines, delivering an immersive and convenient user experience. The application, which relies on gesture recognition and functions without a traditional user interface, was jointly developed by slashwhy and Miele.

All use cases were developed and incorporated in time for the opening of the Living Tomorrow Innovation Campus.
The solutions proved highly robust under real-world conditions, including edge cases.
Although the realised use cases are not series products, a high level of maturity has been achieved - some even up to CE certification.
The knowledge gained from the project can feed into future Miele serial product lines.
The successful realisation of the project reinforces Miele’s position as an innovation leader in the household appliance industry and strengthens trust in the brand.

For the realisation of the Living Tomorrow 2030 project, we have found a development partner in slashwhy that is capable of bringing together and making use of knowledge from various experts in a highly agile process.”

Andreas Enslin

Vice President Miele Design Center

Miele is in the midst of a digital transformation. For this change, we are also bringing in external expertise from partners like slashwhy.”

Matthias Stahl

Project Manager Miele LT 2030

We want to bring to life what will be possible in the future. To achieve this, we need innovation projects like Living Tomorrow.”

Andreas Enslin

Vice President Miele Design Center

Our goal is to pass on 125 years of experience with household appliances and processes by providing assistance systems to our users. A key characteristic of a premium brand is to create added value for our customers beyond devices and their quality through digital applications.”

Matthias Stahl

Project Manager Miele LT 2030

There were great team moments, especially during the integration phase, where the team improvised and switched from keyboards to screwdrivers. Everyone was committed to making the project a success.”

Andreas Enslin

Vice President Miele Design Center

On one hand, you need a very structured approach, otherwise, it ends in chaos. On the other hand, you need to be flexible enough to handle such a ‘fuzzy’ project – and you need people who can deal with that.”

Matthias Stahl

Project Manager Miele LT 2030