Interview about Lavazza Elogy Milk Coffee Machine, winner of the A' Home Appliances Design Award 2021
This coffee machine with integrated milk frother offers the complete package of Italian coffee culture: from espresso to cappuccino or latte. The design takes inspiration from Italian coffee shops and bars and is an evolution of Lavazza's existing form language. It is characterised by a big, seamless shell with three-dimensional Lavazza logo on the side. Metal accents underline the main touch points like lever, drip grid and UI. The Lavazza in Black system also offers peel-able coffee pods that can be recycled more easily. A lot of work went into reducing noise level and energy consumption.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsEnergy consumption and noise level were important aspects in the development process. Most of the noise and vibrations generated come from a few specific components. Most prominent amongst them the pump. So it's important to study the orientation of these components within the technical package of the appliance in order to reduce the noise level. And that's exactly what we did.
This big shell is an important design feature. It allows us to minimize the number of external pieces and thus reduces panel gaps and the impact of assembly tolerances. This leads to a clean and well controlled design and improves the perceived quality of the product. The three dimensional Lavazza logos ont he side play an important part regarding the machine branding.
Lavazza's whole design language is inspired by automotive design. This ranges from volumes and proportions to high quality surfacing. But also colours, material and finishes and also the whole aspect of user experience. In this case we created a touch sensitive user interface incorporating a visual hierarchy and highlighted this touchpoint with a precise chrome ring. This metal accent highlights this important touchpoint.
The great thing about that milk frothing system is that you can make the whole preparation directly in the provided glass mug. You just have to fill the milk to the required level, put on the frother lid and slot the whole vessel into place. The machine does the rest. It prepares the milk foam and also brews the coffee directly into the cup. And you're ready to go.
Italian coffee culture is always at the heart of what we do. It is our reference point and our benchmark. But everything leads also kind of back to it. Of course there are some adjustments here and there, when it comes to domestic and office products, but our inspiration is always there.
From a user experience point of view we struggled a bit initially. There are many different functions and it wasn't easy to keep the user interface truly intuitive. But then we started to arrange the different functions into groups, in order to create a visual hierarchy, that would allow the user to better understand what the different selections and functions are it all started to fall into place quite naturally.
This is the result of a close collaboration between the design team and the colleagues from technical development. We have a shared vision and understanding of what we want to achieve. So fortunately we were able to optimise the internal layout of the components together, and guarantee all the functions while still achieving the compact dimensions.
Sustainability is becoming ever more important. And while capsule machines are extremely convenient and offer a great taste experience with guaranteed consistent in-cup quality, they also have a significant environmental impact. For this reason, Lavazza developed a peelable capsule. Alle the components can be separated and recycled easily.
Yes, the adjustable cuprest is an important feature. There are two different positions: up and down. Putting the cuprest in the upper position brings smaller espresso cups closer to the spout. This reduces coffee splashes and has important benefits for coffee temperature and coffee crema.
We'll have to see how a more professional machine is performing on the market. Hopefully the innovative features of Elogy Milk will prove successful as a whole and also have an impact on future products.
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