Interview about Lavazza Idola Coffee Machine, winner of the A' Home Appliances Design Award 2020
A perfect solution for coffee lovers looking for proper Italian espresso experience at home. The touch sensitive user interface with acoustic feedback has four selections and a temperature boost function offering a tailor made experience for every taste or occasion. The machine indicates missing water, a full caps container or the necessity for descaling through additional illuminated icons and the drip tray can be adjusted easily. The design with its open spirit, quality surfacing and sophisticated detailing is an evolution of Lavazza’s established form language.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsThis user interface represented first and foremost a significant step forward for our very own products and our user experience. Idola is quite an advanced and sophisticated product. It was challenging to place all the necessary functions on one well structured user interface and guarantee an intuitive and pleasant user experience.
This particular design feature was directly inspired by a vase. I had seen it in a store in Munich and thought the side profile was particularly nice. While studying it in detail, I also realised, that - a part form the immediate aesthetical impact - it was also very effective in reducing the perceived height of the object. And that was exactly what I had been looking for. I took this feature as a conceptual starting point and then weaved it into our existing form language.
Developing two separate products on one common, shared platform is always a big challenge. Just because you always need to check twice, and make sure design decisione will work well for either direction. It is important to make this work on both sides, while not compromising the original design idea along the way.
This is always the challenge actually. Creating something relevant, that is in tune with the historical and cultural background while also being able to add something new and exciting to the mix that allows us to project ourselves into the future. Not easy. Always the challenging. Very often colours, materials and finishes can be the emotional key to establishing that balance.
These features are actually not really based on articulated user research or tests as such. But to a certain extent they are based on our very own experience. We've been designing coffee and espresso machines for a long time and know from previous projects that these indicators are needed for a clear and pleasant user experience.
I'd like to think that I've learned quite a lot in the automotive industry. Especially about volumes, surfacing and detailing. When setting up the design operations here at Lavazza, I tried to bring and apply as much of that as possible to our own product development process. Naturally this also applies to the Idola project.
Every new project is an adventure, an exploration that allows you to reinforce or slightly modify and adjust a brand's form language. It's almost like every new product is a new chapter in the ongoing story of a brand. Idola wasn't any different: A new chapter that has it's very own identity but also naturally feels at home with the rest of the family.
We know from experience that there are different preferences for coffee temperature amongst our customers. While some like a "normal" coffee others will preferer a much higher temperature. So naturally we were looking for a way to satisfy this need when we planned the user experience and the user interface.
In most cases a coffee machine has to be as compact as possible so the the overall dimensions are directly linked to the technical package and some other functional requirements. So we worked very close with our colleagues from the technical development in order to optimise the internal layout and make sure we could reduce the visual impact of the machine through the design.
In product design it is always important to choose the right materials for the intended purpose. These materials also directly influence the form language, performance and durability. The material choice very often dictates what can be achieved and what not. Transparency, mechanical stability, heat resistance and many other factors need to be considered.
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