USER EXPERIENCE

1. Insert the cup easily into the support

2. Waiting few second

3. Pick up the cup

4. Enjoy!

Overview

Quick Coffee is a project developed in the last year of bachelor’s degree in Product Design as my thesis project. The course was conducted in collaboration with F-lab. The company’s brief presented the request to design a ‘non-coffee machine’, to bring innovation in the coffee machine market, quite saturated and repetitive. My intention was to rethink the technical components of the machine in order to simplify its production, involve the user by bringing him closer to the raw material and at the same time redesign the aesthetic impact to get away from the stereotype of the classic coffee machine appliance.

PERSONAL IMPROVEMENTS

The project started with a very thorough research phase. We have adopted a user-centered research method, mainly based on scenario and user experience analysis, brainstorming, interviews and field research. All this has allowed me to better understand the perspective of a user-centered design, which considers the emotional aspects related to users and their perception of the experience. At the end of the course, I felt I had improved my skills related to context analysis and user experience. I am satisfied with the result as I think I managed to find innovative and reliable technical solutions that respond at the same time to technical constraint and user experience needs.

Topics

Design research
User-centered approach
Concept ideation
Prototyping
Company collaboration

Quick Coffee

Bachelor Degree’s Thesis - Individual project

Oct 2014 - Feb 2015

Quick Coffee aims to bring a new way to enjoy coffee and its ritual, introducing an innovative coffee machine concept.

Quick coffee allows the user to have a simple interaction, which focuses on the production of the beverage and not on the use of the machinery that produces it.

The centre of interaction is just the cup, managed by the user, and the coffee that unexpectedly forms inside it, emphasizing the ritual related to the consumption of this drink.

The user, dealing only with the cup and the support, does not come into contact with the machine and the more technical components. In this way, from a user point of view, it moves away from the stereotype of the appliance to get closer to the 'non-machine'.

RESULT

1. CUP

The cup is made by two shells which enclose inside a capsule containing the coffee powder closed hermetically.

On the outer bottom of the cup, there is a hole that allows it to be hooked with the support. Once hooked up, the hot water under pressure passes through the coffee powder and the infusion begins.

On the internal bottom of the cup, there are three holes, placed above a one-way valve, which allow the drink to be dispensed inside the cup.

2. SUPPORT

Support is an element added in a second step. The idea of creating separate support, which was simply the base of the dispenser, was suggested by the concept of abstraction. The user will interact with a simple interface that is far from the classic coffee machine shape, thus approaching the concept of the ‘non-coffee machine’.

Furthermore, being connected to the case via a pipe for the passage of water, it allows you to place the case in the background, hidden.

In this way, the aesthetics of the interface with which the user relates does not depend on the size of the tank and the mechanical components as for the other coffee machines.

3. CASE

This choice has allowed to develop a very capacious case and obtain excellent autonomy without aesthetic compromises. For this reason, I decided to use a tank of 2 L, which dispenses around 35 coffees before having to be refilled. In this way, the user will have to deal very rarely with the case. The single moment of interaction will be only during the water refill.

The case, without the necessity of the brew group, presents much fewer shape constraints. The most cumbersome component is the water tank, which allows enough formal freedom.

Leaving the kitchen as a reference environment, I decided to keep a simple and regular shape that could adapt to other domestic spaces. Having a height of less than 10 cm, the goal was to give the user the opportunity to place the case on a lower shelf or even further away from the support.

The brief expresses the company's willingness to innovate the concept of household appliance, trying to create a product that redefined the space around it instead of adapting to it.

In this context, the idea was therefore to design an espresso coffee machine that would move away from the stereotype of a kitchen appliance and become a piece of furniture to be displayed and that would enhance the home environment.
So, The company brief focused on three main concepts:

BRIEF

Decontextualize

Abstracting

To be exposed

ANALYSIS

What about coffee?

Initially, I faced a deep analysis of everything related to coffee, including both technical aspects and more abstract concepts. It was very important to study in deep the relationship between users and machines. The user experience and the complex ritual of drinking coffee were at the center of the project.

What's on the market?

Deepening the concept of household appliances as a stereotype, I analyzed the market of espresso coffee machines and household appliances in general, trying to find what were the concepts that lead an appliance to be defined as such. The main reasons are related to the shape and the aesthetics with which these products are designed.

SOLUTION

Analyzing the technical components of coffee machines on the market, I identified the main cause of these aesthetic-formal problems in the brewing group. It is common to all espresso coffee machines, whether with capsule or classic. The challenge was, therefore, to find a way not to use this component, considerably lightening the technical components and the relative formal constrains, to expand the margin of freedom for an aesthetic and functional redesign.

MAIN AESTHETIC PROBLEMS

1. Too many formal constraints
Very often the margin of innovation from the aesthetic point of view is very small due to the technical constraints.

2. Aesthetics of form
Aesthetics often follows a technical language to explain the function of the product, certainly effective from an affordance point of view but very redundant.

3. Dimension

In most cases the appliance is cumbersome and needs a specific space for its use.

What makes a product a household appliance?

CONCEPT

HOW IT WORKS

When the support detects the presence of a cup attached to it, the preparation begins.

Inside the case, the water is heated and, once in temperatures, it is pumped through a pipe to the nozzle, placed inside the support.

Thanks to the pressure and the use of single-direction valves, the water enters the lower part of the cup and, coming into contact with the coffee powder, the infusion begins. During the process, coffee accumulates inside the cup.

Once the water has been dispensed, a LED indicates the user the possibility of safely unhooking the cup from the holder.

SECOND PARTING

A further "breakdown" allowed to approach the concept of non-machine. The idea was to disconnect the attachment point of the cup for the water supply from the main technical components.

The ‘support’ has the task of dispensing the water inside the cup through a nozzle located on the upper part, to which the user will hook the cup.

FIRST PARTING

The main innovation was to move the coffee capsule from the machine inside the cup. A one-way valve system allows the entry of water from the bottom of the cup and the exit of the drink inside it.

This division allows simplifying the components inside the machine: tank, heat exchanger, pump and electronic components. Without the brew group, the only task of the 'case' is to bring the water up to temperature and dispense it inside the cup.