What role should technology play in human life?
Eight years ago, Google DeepMind developed AlphaGo, which is famous for beating the top players in one fell swoop, and in the following time, Google has gone one step further and began to explore whether AI can solve the "big problem" of human survival. For example, research into advanced artificial intelligence techniques to solve basic scientific problems such as energy efficiency and protein folding, as well as real-world engineering problems such as optimizing data center cooling systems.
Also in this field, NVIDIA, IBM, and Microsoft have successively deployed AI R&D departments, targeting major events such as medical care, autonomous driving, and enterprise management.
The truth is, solving the challenges of humanity's biggest issues has always been a constant pursuit of some of today's most prestigious tech companies.
Domestic tech companies have followed suit and become avid tech evangelists. They are good at opening their minds, not only blowing the bubble of the metaverse to the extreme, trying to blossom in games, entertainment, tourism, education and medical care, but also turning their heads to challenge unmanned driving, causing multiple controversies in morality, law and ethics.
There are so many companies trying to solve humanity's big problems that the mention of technology by ordinary people is a big and cold technological leap.
The relationship between technology and human beings should be more warm.
Technology companies that solve "big problems" are certainly sexy, but human life needs companies that can decentralize technology to solve small problems closely related to life one by one.
A doer who solves life's small problems
"Kitchens that are not easy to use generally have these 'idle products'", on platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douban, users are vying to post their used "IQ tax" products.
"To create the ultimate aesthetics of household appliances" and "to build a better life in the kitchen", in recent years, the scientific and technological revolution of the kitchen appliance track, creating a blueprint is almost a common marketing routine for brands. However, in stark contrast to the overwhelming "show-off" publicity, there are still many small problems in the user's kitchen life: the coating of the rice cooker liner is easy to fall off, and there is a long-term health risk of aluminum precipitation; most wall breakers can only be beaten finely, not only the taste thickness is not adjustable, the noise is also large, and the cleaning is also very troublesome; many water purifiers are actually secretly breeding bacteria inside, not only the cost of core replacement is high, but the hot water is also very slow.
The "small problems" in the kitchen need to be solved urgently, and the scientific and technological revolution of the modern kitchen is even more impossible. Similarly, it is precisely because of the lack of brands that focus on solving these "small problems" that consumers are forced to choose "compromise" and temporarily lower the desire to live well.
How can technological innovation solve these "small problems" in the kitchen? As the disruptive kitchen revolution intensifies, new imaginations begin to emerge.
On April 18, at the 30th anniversary of Joyoung's new product launch, Joyoung, a national brand established for 30 years, used space technology to "make a sample" for all kitchen appliance brands.
"Eating" is a "small thing" that Chinese must do every day, but it hides a potential risk that is easy to ignore: after the coating of the traditional rice cooker is peeled off, the aluminum substrate is in direct contact with the food, and the aluminum element will accumulate with the food into the body to bring health risks.
Joyoung has become the first brand in the industry to stand up and solve this "small problem". After trying iron liners, glass liners, ceramic liners, and stainless steel liners, Joyoung finally took the lead in inventing the stainless steel 0-coated rice cooker in 2022, and realized the cooking effect of stainless steel 0-coated non-stick rice for the first time with the original air-cooled water-moisturized film technology. In 2023, the lattice micro-pit technology will be launched again to achieve the second-level non-stick effect of the national standard.
Subsequently, Joyoung continued to iterate on product technology, and in its latest launch of the 2024 0-coating rice cooker 40N9Upro, the blueprint of the rice cooker in the user's mind of "healthy 0 coating, non-sticky, easy to use, and can make really delicious rice" has gradually become clear.
Joyoung's upgrade of "rice grain activation suspension cabin technology" is the key to achieving the above achievements. The first key upgrade is to find the optimal distribution of the 200,000 lattice micro-pits in the inner tank: the circular micro-pits have been turned into squares, and the spacing of the micro-pits has been further shortened. This distribution allows the rice grains to "float" as if they were on the inner liner, resulting in a better, longer-lasting non-stick effect.
The second key upgrade is to find the password to achieve "really good rice", and realize the "optional rice species, adjustable taste", which can not only cook 10A-level good rice from different regions and different varieties of rice, but also support customized cooking of 8 types of rice, and different rice can also achieve personalized texture soft and hard adjustable, if you want to eat chewy, if you want to eat soft and glutinous, you can achieve it with one click. At the same time, Joyoung also announced that it will cooperate with the China Rice Research Institute to realize the adjustment of the taste of up to 100 kinds of rice in the future, and will successively realize self-service upgrades for users through OTA.
In order to meet the different needs of different groups of people for the nutritional intake of ingredients. Joyoung also spent a lot of effort on the wall breaker.
In order to achieve full and efficient extraction of nutrients from different ingredients, its newly launched all-round wall-breaking nutrition master Y8 adopts the self-developed BlenderX grinding system and the "new Huitong remote sensing technology", so that the machine can continue to boil without spilling while heating up rapidly, so that the food can continue to boil at the optimal extraction temperature.
At the same time, in order to achieve adjustable taste, Y8's inverter brushless strong power motor can achieve stepless adjustment of grinding direction and speed, and the diameter of the drink can be as fine as 85 microns, and the rough taste of cereal milk can also become as silky as milk, or coarse enough to let the food retain the granularity, making high-fiber granular oranges to meet the needs of different tastes.
In addition, Y8 realizes the integration of automatic washing and drying, so that it can be dried and cleaned after washing, freeing your hands. Moreover, the volume of the whole machine is very friendly, and the average volume when making soybean milk is only more than 50 decibels, which is lighter than the sound of people talking indoors, which greatly improves the two major pain points of cleaning trouble and noise of the wall breaker.
In order to facilitate users to scientifically match ingredients and achieve balanced nutrition, Y8 is also equipped with 28 kinds of combined nutrition cereal material packages, which select ingredients with the same origin as medicine and food. Just put it in the packet, scan the QR code on the package, and the intelligent system will match the exclusive extraction program, and the nutrition is delicious.
Finally, it comes the "little thing" of drinking water. Nowadays, water purifiers have become more and more necessary for people's family life, and at the same time, users also need to face more small problems: bacteria breed inside the water purifier, and the "clean water" that comes out must be boiled before drinking, and the cost of core replacement is high...... The birth of Joyoung Hot Small Net R5P also solves these small problems at one time.
In the process of participating in the development of space kitchen water purification equipment, Joyoung has successfully accumulated a large number of aerospace water purification technology, and finally feeds back the household water needs of ordinary users. Nowadays, on the thermal small net R5P, we have seen many space technology homologous technologies, such as the use of space zinc oxide antibacterial materials in the filter element and water pipeline. The full-link antibacterial system of filter element, pipeline, and pasteurization cycle sterilization is like the "immune system" of the water purifier, which effectively solves the risk of internal bacterial growth and allows everyone to drink a glass of clean water with peace of mind.
In order to solve the small problem of expensive filter replacement, Joyoung gave a complete solution: 6-year long-term filter element + AI intelligent element replacement + cost-effective element replacement solution, so that the worry of "buying a water purifier is a down payment, and buying a filter element is like repaying a loan" no longer exists. The confidence of this commitment comes from the intelligent high-pressure pulse filter self-cleaning system developed by Joyoung that allows the filter element to "bathe itself".
At the same time, Joyoung also pioneered the development of an AI intelligent filter life monitoring system, which uses sensors + big data to conduct multi-dimensional real-time monitoring of water quality and flow rate in the user's household, so that everyone can grasp the most real filter element health status at any time. After the expiration of the filter element, it can be replaced with one click, and the price of Joyoung filter element is 30%-40% lower than that of the same level, and the average cost per liter of pure water per day is less than 0.2 yuan in 12 years.
In addition to the powerful antibacterial and long-lasting filter cartridge, the R5P adopts the latest generation of instantaneous high-flow technology, so that the instantaneous fresh water and boiling water can have both a high-flow rate, and a glass of 150ml of boiling water can be filled in 6 seconds, and a glass of warm water can be filled in less than 2 seconds.
Behind the satisfaction of small demand pain points, the concept of "cooking well and eating well" of consumers is truly integrated with the iteration of modern kitchens, and technology has begun to find a real place to carry in Chinese kitchens.
"Health" is more than just a slogan
When the first batch of "post-90s" passed the age of 30, the relevant topics on the Internet became "'post-90s' in debt", "hair loss became 'post-60s'", "mid-life crisis", "dare not read the physical examination report"......
We are busy trying to find a balance between work and life, and we can also be emotionally affected by many "little things". If there is one thing that is the most unhappy after growing up as a "social animal", "when you are busy, you can't eat properly", you will definitely get the most nominations. The happiness that eating can bring to the Chinese people is too high.
For Chinese families, cooking is not only a good life in the busy work, but also a step forward in discovering hobbies and life skills. As a result, we can see that although the pace of life is getting faster and faster, more and more people are interested in cooking.
Among the various social networking and cooking apps, users who are concentrated in their 25s and 40s have found another world. They discuss recipes, choose healthier ingredients, share their cooking creations, show off kitchen appliances they just purchased, and show off lively scenes from family gatherings.
The clatter of fresh vegetables in the kitchen, the boiling of hot soup in a casserole, and the tantalizing aroma of the oven are the best representations of their inner cry for healthy living and eating well.
Turning this slogan from the user's heart into reality is Joyoung's biggest original intention to choose to solve "health problems" and become a doer in the kitchen.
In 2016, Joyoung invented the heating wall breaker. After the wall breaker was introduced to China from Europe and the United States, it set off a boom. However, Chinese consumers have encountered a problem: as a foreign product, the wall breaker in the world is cold and has no heating function at all. What should I do if I want to take a sip of a hot drink?
For Jiuyang, Chinese brands know best that Chinese stomachs need to be warm. Jiuyang applied the temperature control and boiling technology innovation accumulated by the soy milk machine to the wall breaker, and invented the heated wall breaker in 2016, allowing people to drink a variety of nutritious hot drinks in one sip and warm the stomach of Chinese. The heating wall breaker quickly won the favor of Chinese consumers and swept the country. Joyoung wall breaker has been riding the dust since then, and has maintained the industry championship for 8 consecutive years.
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And there are many stories of such small problems cutting into product research and development for Joyoung: radiation-proof induction cooker, butter tea machine, hand-washing soybean milk machine, iron kettle rice cooker, steam rice cooker, quick-tender baking air fryer, frequency conversion light sound wall breaker, anti-winding floor scrubber and so on.
In the past 30 years, Joyoung has not followed the trend and is in a hurry to rapidly expand the product track, but has continued to painstakingly study every health "small problem" that may plague users. As a result, we can not only see the birth of products that can really solve the pain points of users' daily life. The family has truly become the "anchor" of the user's healthy life.
Of course, few people can imagine that Joyoung, which has successfully decentralized many space technologies, has actually walked 30 years on the road of solving the "small problems" of life.
Do one thing with 30 years
Time goes back to the 80s and 90s in the early days of China's reform and opening up. In Chinese kitchens, the emergence of many convenient and automated kitchen appliances has greatly alleviated the problem of time-consuming and laborious cooking for consumers in the past.
The soymilk machine is one of the representatives. In 1994, Joyoung invented the first fully automatic household soymilk machine, which greatly shortened the time for making soymilk. Prior to this, the traditional way of making soybean milk had to go through multiple steps such as soaking soybeans, grinding, filtering, and boiling, and the cumbersome and time-consuming process was also contrary to the gradual acceleration of the pace of modern life.
In the subsequent technology update iteration, Joyoung led the intelligent temperature control, simmering, overflow prevention, wall breaking without slag, automatic cleaning and other functional innovations, which gradually broke through the small pain points of users in the production of soybean milk.
Compared with deep space exploration, sea navigation, urban safety and other topics, making a cup of soy milk is not a hot topic to discuss. But for the average user, it is more warm.
Focusing on solving every pain point in the user's life scene, Joyoung has spent 30 years focusing on user market insight, and finally integrating scientific and technological power with healthy life.
Focusing on the needs of users' health and nutrition, Joyoung soybean milk machine products continue to innovate and iterate, and at the same time, it has also refined the three underlying core technologies of motor drive, intelligent temperature control and nutrient extraction, as well as fluid dynamics technology and overflow prevention technology. Along the above path, Joyoung finally expanded the birth of more small household appliances such as wall breakers, water purifiers, rice cookers, air fryers, health pots, floor scrubbers, hair dryers, etc.
Even on the once crowded small household appliance track, almost all small household appliances are updated and iterative, which contains the core technical concepts of motors, temperature control, and nutrient extraction. Joyoung has also evolved from the founding brand of soymilk machine to the guardian of users' healthy life on the road of 30 years of technology civilization.
The insight into the needs of each user's small problems in life, to the innovation of technology research and development, the improvement of user experience, and the continuous improvement of scientific and technological strength, finally realized the virtuous circle of small problems achieving big technology.
For example, few people can imagine that the water purifier that people are popular today actually comes from the black technology that was "accidentally" born in space exploration. In the 60s of the 20th century, the biggest difficulty encountered by the "Apollo moon landing program" in the United States was drinking water. Because the spacecraft has to travel back and forth between the earth and the moon, the load on the rocket must be compared. But astronauts alone use up to 6 tons of water, making landing on the moon an almost impossible task. But the advent of RO membranes saved the moon landing program. Then, RO membrane became the key technology of household water purifiers.
As a research and development unit of manned space kitchen, Joyoung has accumulated a large amount of space technology in the process of helping astronauts solve the problem of healthy diet and drinking water, which has been copied by Joyoung into civilian products.
For example, as mentioned earlier, a "zinc oxide antibacterial material" developed by Chinese solves the breeding of bacteria and microorganisms, and is also decentralized from Jiuyang to civilian water purifiers. Breakthroughs from space technology, such as hot air circulation heating technology, precise temperature control technology, and inverter light tone motor technology, have finally successfully benefited ordinary people in the daily life in the form of small household appliances.
Joyoung, a doer who focuses on solving the "small problems" of life, has also subtly become a business card of healthy life in the hearts of users.
epilogue
After the birth of the revolutionary product of lighters, people quickly found a "small" pain point in the process of use: in the outdoor environment, lighters are often difficult to ignite due to strong wind, humidity and other reasons. ZIPPO FOUNDER GEORGES BRAISDAI WAS QUICK TO NOTICE THE PROBLEM. The unique draft shield design improves the stability of the lighter for outdoor use. This detail quickly helped ZIPPO win the favor of outdoor enthusiasts, military personnel and ordinary consumers. Today, the ZIPPO lighter is not only a practical tool, but also a collectible and cultural symbol that users are happy to pursue.
Coincidentally, in 2001, Google introduced the "Did you mean" feature to its search engine. This deceptively simple feature greatly improves the user's search experience, reduces invalid searches and user frustration, and solidifies Google's leading position in the search engine market.
In today's AI era, technology inclusion is still the biggest challenge to the integration of technology and human life. Companies and businesses that focus on solving the grand problems of human existence and thus talk about the integration of technology into daily life are indispensable. But we also look forward to seeing more, like Joyoung, step by step, from companies that solve those "small problems" that are inconspicuous but widely present in life scenarios.
From ancient times to the present, in the process of innovation and service, we should not ignore any small user needs or pain points, because they may contain key opportunities to shape great products. In the future, those companies that are good at solving the "small problems" of life will also be an important force to promote economic and social progress and improve the quality of life of users.
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