The Kitchen Is Where the Action Is in Most Households, and with Technology, Builders Can Make It Even More So.

The Yacobians may be the epitome of the over-committed modern American family. Rob works 12 hours per day. Dory works part-time, participates in civic activities, manages their Needham, Mass., household, and shuttles their 13-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter to and from activities. This leaves little time to make decent meals. She reluctantly admits to having fed the kids too much fast food.

No more. The Yacobians are among the first group of households ever to have an Internet-enabled Whirlpool Polara, a range that can keep food cool until a preset time, then start cooking.

Dory can put chicken and vegetables in the oven in the morning, and tell it to have dinner ready at 6:00 p.m. The oven chills the food until it's time to start cooking. If she's running late, Dora can call the oven on her cell phone and tell it to hold dinner until 7:00 p.m. She feels as if it has helped her be a better parent.

"We eat a lot better now. And if you have good food in your life, your life is better," Dory says.

Sorry, but you can't get this—at least not yet. The Yacobians are part of a test that the Internet Home Alliance (IHA) is conducting to see whether people warm up to connected appliances. Besides the oven, they and 19 other families each got a wireless Web pad, an IceBox media device (a combination television/CD/DVD player), and an Internet browser that mounts beneath an upper cabinet. They also got the ability to email a list to the grocery store and have it delivered to their home.

The IHA test is just the first baby step towards the high-tech kitchen, but Dory's enthusiasm bodes well for homebuilders. Tech-wise, kitchens probably have more potential for profitable upgrades than any other room.

"Families spend 60-plus percent of their time together in the kitchen," notes IHA president Bill Kenney. It's where they talk, cook, do homework, and entertain. The right technologies will make the time they spend there more enjoyable, and will free up more time to watch that big-screen home theater. And that will get them singing your praises.

Untapped Potential

But so far, few builders seem to see this potential.

"Mention [kitchen technology] to a group of builders and you're going to see a lot of blank faces," says Jacob Atalla, owner of Strategic Advantage, a Placentia, Calif., land development and technology consultant to homebuilders. He says that, so far, the electronics going into kitchens are simply pieces of whole-house systems: ceiling speakers, lighting controls, security-system control panels.

"People are slow on the uptake," says Derek Fraychineaud, director of residential land development at the Playa Vista development in Los Angeles. His responsibilities include choosing which tech options to offer. Fraychineaud says that under-cabinet TV/DVD combinations are popular, as are Internet browsers. "Internet in the kitchen is becoming larger and larger. People want the ability to go online to pull down cooking menus and stuff like that."

Fraychineaud says that a few more buyers opt for sound in the kitchen, or a small computer niche, and a tiny minority of "tech junkies" are buying the refrigerators with web pad, such as LG's Internet Refrigerator and Samsung's HomePAD model. He thinks it will be years before average buyers start showing interest in these things. "Once consumers get used to new technologies, they tend to want everything. But getting them to that point is a slow and arduous education process," he says.

The education consists of teaching consumers how technology can make their lives easier or their homes more pleasant. Some are emotional items, such as the ability to listen to music while cooking. Others are more aesthetic. For instance, a touchscreen home controller can eliminate what Atalla calls "wall acne," by combining the HVAC, security, audio, and other controls into one.

Many buyers remain skeptical. After all, their time spent in the kitchen is so central to their lives that they don't want to risk having you screw it up. "Buyers want ease and convenience," says Gale Steves, a New York City-based design consultant to the kitchen and bath industry. "Technology is a tough sell in the kitchen unless it's effortless to use."

Designing for Tech

That's the problem: Making kitchen tech effortless requires a lot of effort, and carries the risk of mistakes.

"It's the most complex room in the house from a psychological point of view," says Kenney. The kitchen has always been the stage for an intricate dance that takes place between technology, lifestyle, design, and technology. But as technology gets more complex, so does the task of designing a good kitchen.

Maybe that's why neither Fraychineaud nor Steves sees technology as having a great impact on kitchen design, though it certainly has the potential. One builder who has grasped that potential is Los Angeles-based Pardee Homes.

Technology is leading to a different way of approaching kitchen design," says Joyce Mason, the company's VP of marketing. When Pardee decided to create what it calls "The Ultimate Family Home" in Las Vegas, its designers started the process by meeting with groups of parents and kids, starting with eight-year-olds. "We kept hearing words like chaotic, busy, disorganized, and overworked."

The interviews also confirmed that the television has become the new family hearth, that kids do homework in the kitchen no matter how big you make their bedrooms, that computers are a big part of everyone's life, and that parents want to supervise their kids when they go online. "When people are home, they're all in the kitchen area with their technological gadgets," says Mason.

Pardee's designers targeted these needs with a large kitchen space that keeps everyone within earshot of one another, while accommodating different activities. One end is devoted to cooking, while the other opens to a home-theater room. An island runs down the center of the space. One end of the island serves for food prep; the other is oversized to accommodate school projects, and includes appliances placed at kid height: a beverage refrigerator, a microwave, and a warming drawer.

Because buyers said they didn't want technology taking up space that's better used for something else, Pardee flanked the island's large end with a pair of 8-by-10-foot nooks: a traditional eating nook and a "home management center." The latter consists of two desks, each with an Internet-connected computer, separated by a short peninsula. Kids can do their homework under the eyes of a parent. The result? "The table and chairs in the eating nook aren't covered with homework," says Mason.

Back at the Low End

Of course, most homes are far more modest than Pardee's showcase, and most entry or mid-level builders don't sell much kitchen tech. The opportunity is there, but it can take some creativity to exploit it.

One builder that regularly sells tech upgrades to entry-level and first-time move-up buyers is Carl Franklin Homes in Dallas. According to Steve Brown, who co-owns the company with his brother Dick, the secret to selling these upgrades is saving the buyer money elsewhere. Brown does this by building almost exclusively with Structural Insulated Panels, creating a super-energy-efficient house that saves clients up to $100 per month in heating and cooling bills. Rather than banking those savings, they're spending them on technology.

Although home-theater equipment absorbs a lot of these dollars, Brown sees a lot of the money being spent in the kitchen. The most common choices are more sophisticated appliances, like Bosch dishwashers with ceramic interiors, or the GE Profile Harmony washer/dryer combination, in which the washer uses a hardwired data connection to preset the dryer.

By far the most popular item is Miele's Coffee System, a $1,200 built-in machine that not only dispenses coffee, but grinds its own beans and froths or steams milk for cappuccino or latte. It's recessed into the wall and has its own dedicated water line.

Of course, everyone wants a network jack for a computer. And while brown's first-time buyers aren't about to spend $7,000 for an Internet refrigerator, a lot of them have asked about it. "These are mostly young people," he points out. "If it's a gadget, they want it."

Cooking Gadgets

The fact that Brown's buyers rate the cool factor of a coffeemaker as high as that of a Web pad is significant. Many builders and designers overlook small appliances because homeowners buy most small appliances after they move in. But the growing number of these devices has led some designers to suggest that the kitchen needs to be designed to accommodate them.

One such designer is Don Silvers, a Los Angeles chef and certified kitchen designer. He says that, because of the proliferation of small appliances, one of the biggest problems in most kitchens is a lack of counter space. With countertop TVs and Web browsers available, it can only get worse. That's why he specifies 30-inch-deep countertops in his kitchens. The homeowners can line all of their appliances and electronics against the wall and still have a full two feet of depth as a work area.

These small appliances will likely take on more importance. Beyond, the company that makes the IceBox, is developing a suite of intelligent small appliances—a bread machine, a coffee maker, a rice cooker, a roaster, a slow cooker. The intent is to coordinate them with the oven to have everything done at the same time.

It will be a few years before such appliances become commonplace in American households. Once they do arrive, though, they might actually change people's relationships to their homes. To see how, we need to go back to Dory. The oven and Web pad alone have led her family to spend a lot more time than ever before in the kitchen.

"I can check emails and cook while my son is on the Web pad researching a homework assignment," Dora says. "The kitchen wasn't the heart of my home before, but it is now."

Charles Wardell is a freelance writer who specializes in homebuilding topics. He lives in Vineyard Haven, Mass.