A blog about usability, user interface design and coffee machines.
“Electronic gadgets are frustratingly fickle when there’s a human interface… certainly sounds like a hard and terse taskmaster.“
When I first started working “in the internet” about a decade ago, I saw how utterly rare it was that error messages were written by someone with a marketing or copywriting or usability background. Errors were written by software developers back then, and were almost universally scary or meaningless and often both. With a foot in each camp of techie and marketing I instantly saw the value of good error messages and how making ‘bad error messages good’ plays such a huge part in (increasing) ecommerce conversion rates.
Fast forward 10 years to my up/down love affair with Gaggia number 4. Bear with me on this, there really is a link. I’ve owned multiple Gaggia models now, selflessly giving number 3 away – mainly so I could justify a selfish upgrade – and the current one has a digital display and some built in computing power. One button gives perfect espresso tailored to any whim, and another instant steam for milk frothing. It extracts more flavour from fewer beans than the last one (with exactly the same type of beans, this is a fairly scientific test) and genuinely relegates a lot of coffee-shop coffees to the “disappointingly rough and bitter” camp. And it is quick, quiet and not particularly massive. It really is up there for producing coffee to rival your favourite professionally brewed beverages – easily as good as Costa if not better, way better than Starbucks – through tricks like built in water filters, adjustment for water hardness (testing kit included for programming it) and fine-tuning of length, strength, aroma, grind length and grind finesse. It even has a motorised drip tray that makes pleasing sci-fi esque sounds as it motors up and down courtesy of touch-sensitive controls.
It is brilliant, and would be a wrench to live without, except it has one major flaw which has only just dawned on me. Most of the time I approach it bleary eyed mid week, barely sighted, or rise at the crack of mid-morning at weekends and it does everything perfectly. Occasionally I find the coffee serenity spoiled and bemoan that “sometimes I feel this thing owns and controls me, not the other way round”. I think I’ve even been as far as voicing “sometimes I feel like I’m this machine’s bitch” – usually when it needs its nappy changing (the grounds bin), or needs more water, or needs the filter changing, or – and this is the biggy – needs descaling. Descaling only comes round about twice a year but takes forever, and needs an attentive master to follow its instructions to the letter for an everlasting 25 minutes of filling and emptying and flushing. Believe me, be at its relentless mercy during that process and by the end of it you feel you should back away gratefully bowing.
The moment of realisation about my (part-time) feelings of being the 2nd class citizen to its superiority came recently when I first started properly paying attention to its little screen. In normal mode, when it is dispensing its delicious hot brown nectar, it is polite. “Brewing in progress, please wait” type of messages.
When the dynamic changes, and it occasionally switches to maintenance mode and turns from domestic goddess to bossy matron, the please’s just dry up. “Empty drip tray”. “Close steam knob”. “Replace filter”. “Descale now”. “Call me Mistress”. Ok, so I made that last one up, but believe me, that’s how it feels at times. Not only does it go from servant to master, but when it does it drops all its good manners and all semblance of politesse at the same time – a real double blow. Making perfect coffee politely one minute, rudely bossing me into boring, servile domestitude the next. Mainly when I’m in a rush. And it never says thank you either – not even when it gives you a sequence of jobs in one sitting.
It got me thinking about how the whole experience of owing the machine (which I essentially get a huge amount of daily pleasure from) is skewed stupidly – at times – by these terse messages at exactly the worst time. I’m not saying I need an elaborate 90’s welcome reminiscent of a Japanese midi hifi system, but if it upped rather than diminished its manners when it needed my input, the sweet journey through life that it (ok, I’ll come clean, I sometimes call it Lady Gaggia) and I are on would be all the more rewarding, at least for me. So Gaggia, and software designers, take note..
