Samsung, as a global IT leader, have been developing quality products and services to help our customers enjoy more convenient and smarter lifestyles and providing them with home appliances as well as mobile and AV devices. Although our Side By Side refrigerators (SBS) ranked number one in the global market for five consecutive years, we were under a difficult situation in terms of market share, profit and loss because of the overall poor value phenomenon that occurred in the global SBS market. To overcome these problems and to lead the global market, we needed premium products with unprecedented new values.

While the global SBS market saw its value shrinking with the lack of innovation, the market volume of premium products increased in the refrigerator market. Therefore, we needed to add new, meaningful values to SBS’s to turn them into premium products. The job could not be completed with a simple upgrade in exteriors and specifications. It was an important job that required us to understand the essences of refrigerators and users from scratch. Building a firm premium SBS line-up and strengthening our leading position on the market based on such understandings became our major goals for the project.

Users were at the center of the project. After we carefully watched and considered how and why users use refrigerators, the concept of Food Showcase was born. After related departments shared a designed mock-up, the development started in earnest. To verify and upgrade the concept, we performed several research projects and interviews. We placed usability, accessibility, aesthetics and even the users’ psychological stability as top priorities. To ensure that the initial concept should be delivered to final users, we continued the project by designing architecture optimized for various insulation technologies, a large structure and applied molding technologies.

We divided the refrigerator space into two after analyzing usage patterns. The Innercase was a space for those who cooked often or preserved food ingredients freshly for a long time. The Showcase was a space for those who wanted snacks or took out food frequently. As each user got their own spaces, they could use the refrigerator more easily and efficiently than before. To consider all these people is the new value of the Food Showcase and what our company also seeks. For the new premium SBS solution, we applied various advanced technologies while presenting a very refined exterior.

Our Design team came up with the concept of “Food Showcase.” The major goal of this project was to find a new value which could help SBS’s make a quantum leap to a premium line. With the faith that the product premium came from users, we carefully watched and considered how and why users used refrigerators. Finally, we managed to create a new SBS platform, the Food Showcase. After sharing a design mock-up, we took on the development project with a common goal that all family members with their own usage patterns could use their spaces most easily and efficiently.