The silhouette could not change.
This was the main parameter guiding the designers and engineers at KitchenAid as they set out to upgrade one of the brand’s hero product, the stand mixer. Used by amateur and professional bakers for more than 70 years, the classic stand mixer is a staple of the kitchen appliance world, and much of its staying power has to do with the consistency of the product, which has changed remarkably little in all that time. Most notably, the mixer’s bowl-hugging form factor has defined it since the start.
So when the company decided to integrate some new features and functions into an updated version of the mixer—the Artisan Plus Stand Mixer, now on sale from $599—the design team knew that any change must not affect that signature look.
“We’re in a unique spot here because we are really attached to the silhouette. We really don’t want to change the outside, which is a challenging engineering function when you say no, the package is fixed,” says Joseph Snyder, a system architect at KitchenAid.
What’s new about KitchenAid’s stand mixer
The changes included in the new Artisan Plus are the biggest improvements to KitchenAid’s stand mixer in its 70-year history, according to the company. Features include a new, slower ingredient folding speed, continuous speed control for smooth transitions between speeds, an automatic light focused into the mixing area, and a special mixing wand that simultaneously stirs and wipes the inside of the bowl.
“Now you’ve got to put all this functionality in there. So we had to do a lot of work to fit this new control in here because we really couldn’t make any changes to the outside,” Snyder says. “We had to do this all inside.”
Adding these new features required the equivalent of industrial surgery. Snyder says the designers and engineers realized they had to make a major change to the internal workings of the mixer, replacing what Snyder calls “tried-and-true” analog electromechanical controls with a computer-like microcontroller.
But those analog controls also defined the mixer, in a way, with its tuned-weight system dictating a range of 10 distinct speeds. For this new version, KitchenAid was careful not to totally redefine the speed controls. “Some users are very attached to the way they do it today,” Snyder says. “I do this thing at speed two, I do this thing at speed four.”
Recognizing that other users wanted more nuance in their mixing speeds, they introduced continuous speed control, which allows users to dial up and down the speed seamlessly, rather than speeding up or down in a jarring (and potentially messy) step change. Adding the microcontroller inside the mixer allows it to have both the preset speeds and the seamless transition.
According to KitchenAid’s market research, another feature users have been asking for is the now 11th speed on the mixer, the extra slow “folding” speed, for gently mixing delicate ingredients into the bowl. Folding speed already exists on other KitchenAid mixers, but was not possible in the stand mixer before this upgrade. “We saw people taking our mixer and turning it on and turning it back off, turning it on and back off,” Snyder says. “They were sort of making a pulse mode on their own. We said, ‘we can help these people.’”
A better beater
Another new feature that has been used in other KitchenAid appliances is the new “double flex edge beater,” the silicone-edged wand that continuously scrapes the inside of the bowl, eliminating the need for users to manually scrape ingredients back into the center with a spatula.
Snyder explains that the beater has a unique twist to its design that helps push the ingredients down into the center of the bowl during the mixing process. The silicone edges help prevent the ingredients from pushing out and climbing up. But making this all possible generates extra load on the machine—load the old analog controls couldn’t handle.
The new microcontroller is able to generate the power needed to use this special wand, and the interior of the mixer’s body was tweaked to keep the system cool while doing so. “This is something we wanted to do for quite a while, but without making other changes, we really couldn’t. We had to be able to change the air flow and make some structural changes,” Snyder says. This new wand, he notes, can’t be used on older models of the stand mixer.
Some of these design features have been in the works for years; folding speed, for example, has been a company goal for more than a decade. But Snyder says that even though some of the features aren’t exactly new, they’ve found the right moment to be combined into this new version of the stand mixer without completely reinventing the wheel.
“It’s a very mature platform,” he says. “You’re always trying to thread that needle of adding new features without stepping away from your brand and what people recognize when they see that across the room.”