Willowbrook native places 3rd in housewares design competition

Austin Laniosz is a busy guy.

While completing a study abroad program in Singapore this semester, the 20-year-old University of Illinois industrial design student and Willowbrook native also is flying back to Chicago to exhibit a housewares product design at the International Home + Housewares Show, from Saturday through Tuesday at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Laniosz recently won third place and $1,000 in the International Housewares Association’s annual Student Design Competition in February. Laniosz will showcase his Olie Cooking Oil Dispenser product alongside the other competition winners at this year’s upcoming expo.

“I’m definitely excited to go,” Laniosz said. “What I’m looking forward to most is exposing myself to the housewares business and learning how to communicate design better – how to talk the design language.”

After an industrial design class introduced Laniosz to the competition, he was motivated to create his product after learning how much cooking oil people consume each year. Laniosz cites 163.9 million metric tons of vegetable oils as being consumed globally in 2013 in his contest design proposal.

“The goal of the product of is to diminish excessive consumption of oil,” Laniosz said.

Oil can be a healthy alternative to butter when cooking but only in moderation, Laniosz said. His product can solve the problem of excessive oil consumption by allowing for consumers to more efficiently moderate their oil use.

Olie works by dispensing cooking oil from a refillable container through a pressurized X valve, much like those found at the ends of squeezable ketchup bottles. Olie dispenses oil at 1 teaspoon increments into a small chamber with a bristle attachment. The bristles then spread the oil around the pan or another hot surface without the user having to get too close to the heat.

As one might imagine, however, coming up with this design wasn’t an easy feat. His concept took many forms until he found one that worked.

“When I first started this project, I remember using these really large milk bags, like the kind you’d find in a cafeteria,” Laniosz said.

Those previous designs were eliminated after failures in some way, he said.

“It was either uncomfortable, it didn’t solve my problem or it solved the problem and created new ones. The final design was one where I could say, ‘I think I did my job,’” Laniosz said.

Laniosz said he is satisfied with his final design and has learned a lot from the competition.

“I think in order to be a good designer you should be able to work through a lot of different mediums,” he said. “You want to see your work manifested in many different types of products.”

And although all the ideas won’t work out, inspiration sometimes comes from the strangest places.

“Don’t rule out weird ideas too quickly,” he said.