My Coffee Maker Just Makes Coffee

I had to replace my dual Keurig coffee maker twice over a period of just five months. This occurred nearly a year ago and these are my findings. I followed the cleaning schedule suggested by the manufacture's manual and took good care of the appliances overall. My initial conclusion was that the product was just poorly designed. "It must be built to fail!" I said to my wife the morning of the second machine's failure. Yet another product that is replaced under warranty with a new version, while the broken one is simply tossed aside. More e-waste because why not? But after some further reflection, I came to realize the "poor design" was simply a symptom of a greater cause: The product tries to do too much. I'm probably beating a dead horse by now when I reference suckless software, but the core philosophy can be applied to both digital and industrial design. Far too often I witness fellow designers over-engineer customer requests or add excessive bloat to new product features. It's almo

I had to replace my dual Keurig coffee maker twice over a period of just five months. This occurred nearly a year ago and these are my findings. I followed the cleaning schedule suggested by the manufacture's manual and took good care of the appliances overall. My initial conclusion was that the product was just poorly designed. "It must be built to fail!" I said to my wife the morning of the second machine's failure. Yet another product that is replaced under warranty with a new version, while the broken one is simply tossed aside. More e-waste because why not? But after some further reflecti