The KitchenAid Craft Coffee Story
A company in Dubai is asking me to teach a design thinking and innovation course in May of next year, and this was good synchronicity because I came across the video below recently.
The design process is often very mysterious to people, and the way that designers pursue the design of a new object is often hard for people to grasp. But the design thinking methodology has helped to bring a little bit of the magic of design to other business disciplines, especially innovation. Videos like this help provide a peek behind the veil and give people a little taste of what the process of design and the use of design thinking look like in practice.
KitchenAid’s goal in creating the Siphon Coffee Brewer, Pour Over Coffee Brewer, Precision Press Coffee Maker and Burr Grinder was to bring the coffeehouse experience into the home by automating brewing methods celebrated within coffeehouse culture. They studied the art and science of many craft brewing methods in order to create coffee brewers that deliver the precision and mastery of the best baristas.
Did they achieve this goal?
I don’t know, I don’t even drink coffee. But they’ve done a nice job of capturing their design process in the video, and have offered non-designers a good peek behind the veil of design.
If they have achieved their goal, then it will now be simple to enjoy an authentic cup of craft coffee at home. They say life tastes better with coffee, my taste buds say no. Chocolate is better!
More info at http://kitchenaidcraftcoffee.com
p.s. Design Thinking even plays a role in my new book on organizational change – Charting Change (Feb 2016) – pre-order your copy now. 🙂
