Team: D. Costa & D. Kussmaul - Prof. P. Eckart (HfG-OF, advisor), as DeLonghi Marketing and Design teams.; Germany, 2010 (5 months)
My role: Research, UX / ID / UI, Content Strategy
My role: Research, UX / ID / UI, Content Strategy
Context
As part of its project 'Design Academy' DeLonghi challenged us to envision how coffee preparation and drinking experience would/could be ten years in the future. The only technical constraint was that the machine should have an integrated milk container.
Problem
People have less and less space and they move more and more.
Challenge
How is the coffee drinking experience be in the future?
Strategy & solution
Thinking the experience as the interplay of physical and digital interfaces we developed a convertible coffee machine that fits any lifestyle. The digital interface also allows the user to fine tune their coffee drink and create new combinations.
Learning | Research, personas, and insights
Creating | Sketching
Solution | ID
Solution | UX - Information architecture
For both amateurs and experts
Our research allowed us to describe user profiles, providing the guidelines to the UX design. It should be easy for the casual drinker to quickly find what they want and expand possibilities for the expert.
Clarity about the WHAT & precision about the HOW
The main guidelines were that the screens should be clear about WHAT (which drink category) and HOW (the relevant variables to be adjusted according to the user's preference).
Social Media
Sensazione is a community of coffee aficionados, that allow for people to discover and share coffee drinks.
Solution | UI
Process transparency and Feedback
When the process starts the machines shows an animation describing all stages of the process and providing feedback.
Context dependent adjustments
Depending on the kind of drink the user will have different options to control. Coffee strength will be available to pretty much any selection. Other Options will be amount, milk proportion or even a mixer to control the global proportions of milk, foam and coffee. Further research and development would be necessary to evaluate the relevance and efficacy of this UI.
