Right, we have a direction we can go in, - "We're designing a to train young volunteers at a homeless shelter to cook"

We also have a visual list of tools that would be useful to train people for - a knife, soup ladle, meat tenderizer, frying pan and grater

Next, we need something we can train people to do.... or perhaps not do?

Common Mistakes With Common Kitchen Tools

Not a definitive set of them, but trying to recall some common accidents and issues I've seen or heard about first time volunteers having when they've used these

• Kitchen Knives
• Improperly balancing the knife, so it slips from their hand and into the wall ahead
• a loose grip while cutting, so the knife slips out when they try to cut something
• using too much force (a la a butchers knife) which dulls the tool
• Soup Ladle
• slipping while holding the ladle - soup on the floor
• too much soup in the ladle in general
• spilling hot soup on their clothes
• pointing at something with the ladle, flinging beans across the space
• Meat Tenderizer
• dropping it, almost on their foot
• missing the patty and denting the counter
• Grater
• ... had heard about someone using it to grate the metal kitchen counter, leaving the table covered in scratches and grooves
• thats more of a mistake with supervision
• cant recall many from when I was there ...
• Frying Pan
• swinging it too high, often its not necessary to lift it at all, its okay to just use a spatula to move the food about - especially sausages.
• scraping a spatula too hard on the pan, damaging the coating
• fingers touching the edges of the pan
• hitting or tapping the sides of the pan while waiting for the food to be sufficiently heated.

Brief Breakdown

The grater is the tool I've heard (or seen) the least amount of issues with... so perhaps its not something that really needs someone to be trained to use it... but with the kitchen knife, ladle, tenderizer and frying pan, their misuse either has the potential to damage the tool (or workspace), or cause hurt to themselves, making me more inclined to want to complete something that counteracts that.

Thought Train & Carriages

• It's obvious now that there isn't just one tool that can fit all these different situations...
• multiple training tools used together may address this
• maybe the tool can be modular add little bits that make using them different?
• what if part of the tool is virtual?
• can I still bring back some aspect where the tool judges your work?
• training happens in groups, so other new volunteers watch someone use the tool, maybe I could think up something that takes advantage of this?
• I need to consider the weight of the tools... it has to be sufficiently heavy that it doesnt feel like you're just air guitaring with a plastic stick