The Recipe for an Award-Winning Coffee Machine

“Here I am! – A premium coffee machine, ready to serve the world’s best coffee!”

Ever considered how a coffee machine should express its identity and presence in relation to people and its surroundings? Designing a product from scratch, especially a professional coffee machine, is more complex than one might think. It requires carefully crafting its form, materials, colors, and functional composition to communicate its purpose and quality effectively.

So, allow me to brag a little—uncharacteristically Swedish, perhaps—about how we at Avalon Innovation created an award-winning coffee machine for Wittenborg. Competing against multiple players, we were entrusted with designing a new machine for the Scandinavian HoReCa market (by the way, that means—Hotels, Restaurants, Cafés) by Evoca Group, one of the world’s leading coffee machine manufacturers, home to brands like Gaggia, Necta, and Saeco.

Where do you even begin with such a challenge? To ensure a structured process and full control, we followed our proprietary innovation model, Avalon Innovation Model™, aligning product goals (delivering top-quality coffee, fast and efficiently in a unique product with Nordic Design which differentiates itself in the market), project goals (timelines, deliverables, stakeholders), and business goals (market satisfaction, share growth).

Beyond technical performance, creating the right product means deeply understanding user needs and translating them into a seamless total user experience—not just in physical form but sometimes even in perceived “spaces” between elements that influence interaction. Like for example, the space between the cup tray and the nozzle heads. Good design isn’t about subjective opinions; it’s about fact-based, function-driven decisions that ensure every design choice serves a defined purpose.

In the early design phase, we collaborated with our client to define the machine’s core attributes—Quality, Robustness, and Thrustworthy—each rich in interpretation. The following discussion provided the concrete framework for its final design. Translating these traits into a physical form was a meticulous process, balancing aesthetics, functionality, production feasibility, and innovation.

Ultimately, how these chosen attributes are applied and perceived in the Wittenborg W100 is open to interpretation—but I hope you’ll soon experience it firsthand, along with a great cup of coffee! The machines are already shipped in Sweden and soon worldwide.

Got thoughts, ideas, or a project in mind? Let’s talk—after all, as a side effect it seems that we often design award-winning products!