Redesign of a coffeemaker

This project is part of the course ‘Usability and User eXperience Assessment in Design’–shortly UXAD–which is given during the Master Design for Interaction. Because of legal reasons, some images and text are blurred, left out or changed to protect the company’s rights. 

Redesign the coffeemaker by solving the current problems. This redesign should focus on new users that do not have any experience with the specific coffeemaker. Likewise it should be a positive and convenient way of getting a cup of coffee.

Context of use

To redesign a coffeemaker, firstly the current coffeemaker needs to be assessed. This is done by looking at how the product is build up, what the purpose and function is and by creating a context of use.

First User Test

After the product and usage inspection, user experiments are conducted to gain initial insights about the current coffee maker. This was done within the team and a few students at the faculty.

Consumer and Professional Reviews

By looking at online reviews written by customers, positive and negative points are obtained. Overall it can be concluded that users are positive about the coffeemaker. 

Internal Analysis

After the first part of the analysis, a design goal is created with its interaction vision and requirements. The goal is to redesign the coffeemaker by solving the current problems. This redesign should focus on new users that do not have any experience with the specific coffeemaker. Likewise it should be a positive and convenient way of getting a cup of coffee.

Subsequently, an internal analysis is being executed for future possibilities.

Conceptualisation

The internal analysis is followed up by a session of sketching design ideas, considering the company stakeholder input and eventually criteria for the concepts which consist of: costs, difference, feasibility and ease of use. Based on these criteria, three concepts are created.

Paper Prototyping

The three concepts are quickly tested with participants by making paper prototypes of them. This allows for insights but also quick changes when needed. Scenario cards are used which represent a real-life situation. E.g: make coffee for yourself and a friend and clean the machine afterwards.

Convergence

After testing the concepts, the positive elements of each concept are taken and a final concept is created. The so-called Turning Point concept showed that descaling was the clearest with this concept. The selection of the ‘Less Buttons, Less Problems’ was preferred over the others and the elements below were preferred from the concept ‘Hide and Seek’.

Visual Style

After the convergence a visual style is created for the user interface. A timeless and minimal design was chosen because of hygiene and the coffee maker being a timeless piece that should and could be used for the next 10 years.

Button Research

Another important aspect was the feel of the buttons. It matters a lot how buttons feel and some small tests were conducted to see what kind of buttons participants felt more comfortable with.

Icon Meaning

The discussion what icons to use also led to doing a short test with users. Instead of arguing as a team what icons should be used, it is smarter to ask your target audience which icons make sense to them and which don’t. These small tests are very valuable as it shows immediately what icons should (not) be used.

Final Test Setup

After redesigning the elements of the user interface, a final test setup is created. This is done by replacing the top part of the coffee maker with a 3D printed part so that another interactive user interface could be added to it. This was done with Principle.

Two experiments

For the final testing, two experiments are conducted: Ease of Use and Preference. The Ease of Use test is a quantitative analysis conducted with 14 participants. The Preference test is a qualitative test with 10 participants whereas each user interacted with both coffeemakers. The coffeemaker with its own standard user interface and the redesigned coffeemaker. Both tests were conducted to gain different insights.

Test results: Ease of Use

Firstly the results of the Ease of Use test are shown. Both concepts are tested with participants and have been given a different name: Bolli and Kapi. This was done to avoid biases by participants and by not telling them what concept was the redesigned coffeemaker. The results show that descaling (cleaning of the machine) improved drastically and that making one cup of tea improved a little bit.

Test results: Preference

Following with the results of the Preference test. Besides using the qualitative data such as quotes and comments from the users, the data was also divided into different aspects which were gained by conducting an interview with the user at the end of the concept testing. The four aspects are which coffeemaker they preferred in general, the one they preferred when it comes to functionality, when it comes to appearance and which coffeemaker was easier to use. The results show that Kapi is much more preferred, which is the redesigned coffeemaker. Good for us. 😅

Oh and $$$?

Money makes the world go round (I guess 🤷‍♂️?). Besides asking about the preference and which concept the participants would take home, they were also asked about the price for both concepts and how much they would pay for it. This gave an indication on whether a small change in design could actually affect how much someone is willing to pay for a coffeemaker. It showed that in general users would spend around €15,- more for the redesigned coffeemaker. Not bad.

Final Redesign

The final redesign focuses on the top part of the coffeemaker. This is a part that is easily changeable without drastically changing the entire design. This is advantageous as a lot of parts can be reused and the costs can be kept low.

Expandability

One of the requirements was the ability to have an expandable user interface. Something with re-releasing a product and acting like it is a totally new one. 👀 The top part can be changed by adding extra icons. Therefore in the future more features could be added such as the possibility of making a cappuccino or a latte.

Project

This project aimed at all aspects of the redesign starting from research all the way up to testing the final redesign.

Group members: Claire Galjart, Ting-Chieh Chen, Koen van der Loop and me.

In specific I was responsible for visualising the results and creating the interactive user interface with Principle. I would have loved to end this project with showing the video that was created as part of this redesign for the company but #legalreasons.

Likewise, this page does not show every aspect of the project. Thus, for more information regarding this project, don’t hesitate to contact me.