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Preventing users from pouring water into coffee machine beans compartment
- monksy 14y agoWouldn't a label for this suffice? Who's going to read a manual only to find out that this is connected to the internal plumbing?
- hcarvalhoalves 14y agoIf it's obvious enough, it won't need labels. In fact, the right way to design these kind of products is to assume the person using it cannot read.
- daigoba66 14y agoPerhaps a label and a "no water" symbol? Like this: http://thumb15.shutterstock.com/thumb_small/290671/290671,1263638117,28/stock-vector-vector-illustration-of-modern-icon-depicting-a-not-pouring-liquid-signal-44588677.jpg http://thumb15.shutterstock.com/thumb_small/290671/290671,12...
- monksy 14y agoThat sounds like madness.. The doors that way!
- just_observing 14y ago"a brief hand-crafted manual" You deserve your problem if you use that terminology for whatever people are not reading.
- biot 14y agoHave a fine mesh on a 45 degree angle that will allow the whole beans to slide down the mesh, but that water will pass straight through. The beans slide into a permanently covered bean receptacle that is impossible to add water to without disassembly (which should be an option for cleaning). Beneath the mesh you could have a catchment to collect small bean particles and any water that the user tries to add, and the design and placement should be quite obvious that water poured onto the mesh isn't going anywhere. Conversely, let it collect there and go nowhere. If that catchment overflows, it goes onto the counter.
- alanctgardner2 14y agoThis was proposed, but especially if the bean capacity is large getting the beans wet is a big no-no. It also does nothing to dissuade users from adding more water for whatever reason (until it overflows). Thus you get potentially moldy beans, and a tray full of gross old water.
- biot 14y agoSeveral proposed perforated containers for the beans, but what I had in mind is a wire mesh similar in spacing (but not shape) to this: http://upload.ecvv.com/upload/Product/200801/200631654352537576_Wire_Mesh_Strainers_Sink_Strainer_colander.jpg http://upload.ecvv.com/upload/Product/200801/200631654352537... Only a serious idiot would ever try to pour water on that. The beans slide down the wire mesh into the main bean compartment which is otherwise inaccessible.
- alanctgardner2 14y agoSome machines have a wire filter like that to stop objects getting into the water tank; users might misinterpret it. I still really prefer the ones where you have to take out a basket, which is obviously not capable of holding water, and fill it with beans. Sealing it and getting the beans is harder.
- mistercow 14y agoFor a user to misinterpret and pour water on what biot described would require such a fundamental misunderstanding of common sense and what I can only hesitatingly call "physics", that I don't think it is possible to protect the machine from such a user - except, perhaps, to hope that they will be foiled by the doorknob whose operation they must decipher in order to enter the break room.
- vacri 14y agoA fine mesh is also great at directing a fair amount of water along the flow of the mesh.
- taylorwc 14y agoTry a passive aggressive note yet? Humiliation is a fantastic break room tactic.
- _pmf_ 14y agoI don't subtlety works on the target demographics.
- daemin 14y agoThis brings up a sad story from my old work. We had a coffee machine where you had 2 containers, one for the beans and one for the water, never had a problem with knowing which was which. But there was also a place to put in pre-ground coffee, which we never used. One day a consultant came along, and not being able to make coffee because the machine had run out of beans, they proceeded to pour beans into the space reserved for the pre-ground coffee. We found this out by the horrific gear crunching noise the machine had made as the coffee beans shredded the internals to bits. It was a disappointing and sad day for the engineers, many of whom were frequent coffee drinkers. Needless to say after the machine was repaired we taped that pre-ground coffee access port closed.
- tzury 14y agoThat's a nice story of how a consultant have ruined the engineer's day.
- jarek 14y agoYou could also say it's a nice story of how a lack of documentation caused pain for both consultant and engineers.
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoAnd yet the premise of good UI design is that it should be self-documenting.
- vacri 14y agoUse a padlock. Put the key where only knowledgable users can find it. This will cut down on your casual visitor screwing things up. Engineer a dyson-vacuum-cleaner-like apparatus which 'sucks' water and beans in different ways. Do the first comment's ideas, but make it a two-stage event - first is to put the item on the grid/flap, second is to manually fold the gridflap into the machine, where it's dumped into a temporarily unsealed beanbox. Water won't stay in the grid long enough to hang around for the second stage. Create a sniffer that requires the scent of a fresh bean to be presented before opening the port. Drink hot chocolate instead Sell special iron-laced beans and use a magnetic apparatus.
- Matti 14y agoA label saying "This container is for coffee _ _ _ _ s" with a lettered padlock (http://wordlock.com/padlocks/ http://wordlock.com/padlocks/) would perhaps be preferable to the hidden key solution.
- edouard1234567 14y agoAll you need is to design your bean enclosure so it's never completely empty. The few beans trapped in what I'd call a "reminder reservoir" will be enough to remind users beans go here.
- rcsorensen 14y agoIf you can do this and keep the beans segregated, this is far and away the best solution. Even just gluing a coffee bean or two to the outside might work.
- onethree 14y agoor rather than having real beans, have fake beans at the bottom. I'm assuming that at some point the real beans in the reservoir would go off
- beedogs 14y agohire smarter people? I've never heard of this happening; I didn't know people could be that dimwitted.
- stephengillie 14y agoI'm going to bring up the Microsoft Starbucks machine again, as it has also solved this problem. They used the 2nd solution - a water line directly to the machine. Also, the beans-hopper holds 2 kinds of beans, usually house blend and decaf, which rarely go empty at the same time. No worries about watering the hot chocolate powder hopper, either. says "Hot Chocolate" on the compartment lid, and inside it's covered in chocolate dust.
- aptwebapps 14y agoRead a little more closely: the machine in question has a direct water line but people still occasionally put water in the bean compartment. My theory: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175098 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175098
- stephengillie 14y agoI'm not sure if you've seen one of these coffee machines. When you come to one, your first thought isn't "where do I put water", it's "what kind of coffee do I want?" Here it is, to the right of a Keurig coffee pot: http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4ef3bec5ecad04cd2c00002d-900/the-company-used-to-have-a-keurig-coffee-machine-but-it-got-a-starbucks-coffee-maker-for-this-new-space-people-are-very-happy-about-it.jpg http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4ef3bec5ecad04cd2c0...
- aptwebapps 14y agoThe article already has a picture and it is a bit different than that. Even with machines where you have to put the water in you don't have to do it for every cup, most likely people either put water when they put in beans, because that's what they are used to, or perhaps when the machine isn't working properly and they are trying to get it going again.
- moe 14y agoHow about a visible warning sticker "Don't pour water here" (ideally with a pictogram for people who can't read)?
- malkia 14y agoSurely this needs needs Mr. Bean pointing finger.
- d33pika 14y agoDon't have any opening to fill in beans or by mistake water, Get beans in a sealed container, sealed with cardboard at the bottom, which the machine can penetrate. Another solution is to connect bean jar through a pipe to bigger source of beans similar to how water is sourced. The bean source is maintained by a dedicated person. If they cannot learn how at use it,restrict access thats the way to go!
- decklin 14y agoDon't put the coffee machine next to the sink or water cooler.
- VLM 14y agoSimple elegant and effective. If it takes one second to transfer water from sink to machine, you only get one second to process the data and possibly get the wrong conclusion. If it takes 60 seconds to walk across the room, that provides time to think ... why did they make it so hard to add water to this thing? Plenty of time for data processing to kick in and notice ur doin it wrong
- veemjeem 14y agoThis may sound dumb, but maybe the easiest solution is to put a transparent fake water container that never drains. So anyone who is about to pour water would see that the machine already has water. Since the machine in question is hooked up directly to the tap, one never needs to fill it with water.
- eulo 14y agoI hope you're this guy: http://ux.stackexchange.com/users/19103/ratchet-freak http://ux.stackexchange.com/users/19103/ratchet-freak Otherwise I'm e-mad
- daemin 14y agoThat's what I was thinking, but then the water would stagnate, go green, and be a potential source of mosquitos. So someone will want to change it. The fix would obviously be to make a little bit of the water be drained away whenever a coffee was made, but then it would need refilling and you're back to a situation where you might as well just have 2 containers and disconnected from the water supply.
- bathat 14y agoSince the false water container on top isn't going to be used anyway, what about just filling it with something hostile to microbes, like dilute hydrogen peroxide? If you wanted to get really fancy, you could even add a couple lines marked "max" and "min" and add some plumbing to make the fluid level vary between them.
- daemin 14y agoApart from the problem of having potentially toxic substances as part of a beverage generation device, adding extra moving parts to simulate a non-moving part is really adding unnecessary complexity, effectively trying to fight against the universe (and the idiots that it produces).
- mistermumble 14y agoInstead of a liquid, it could be filled with solid plastic, similar to the fake glasses of liquid you see in joke shops. And perhaps a subtle label on the surface, for someone who notices that the container does not really have sloshing-around liquid in it: "No water required"
- noknockers 14y agoWhich company would ever stop this from happening? More breakages = more money.
- drewwwwww 14y agoa coffee machine like this is guaranteed to make terrible coffee. the solution is to have better equipment. if you see a coffee machine that has bean storage, it's almost guaranteed to suck.
- mhb 14y agoEliminate the bean compartment and dispense the beans from a centralized location just like the water. Either using an augur or a pneumatic tube delivery system.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoThe best part about this solution is the inevitable conspiracy theories about the Government fluoridating our beans.
- sdoering 14y agoThanks a lot, as it is early in the morning here, you just made my day start better with a little laughter.
- mwill 14y agoClearly the next step is eliminating the coffee machine and desperate coffee itself from a centralised location.
- nisse72 14y agoWe have a cafe style coffee grinder (next to our manual espresso machine) that has two hoppers: one for the beans, and one where the ground beans end up, from which you dispense into the porta filter. I am guilty of filling the wrong hopper with beans (talking instead of paying attention). Twice. Not quite as bad as water, but still a PITA to pour everything out and separate the beans from the ground coffee.
- stephen_g 14y agoThe coffee snob in me wants to say that for a nasty automatic machine like that, putting water in the bean hopper and breaking it is probably a good thing! Seriously, used commercial machines are fairly cheap and will make a far superior coffee which is worth twenty seconds of work. But if you must, I like the idea of a bean container that must be removed to be filled. Better than warning labels (that people will ignore) or putting a picture of a bean there or something.
- hartror 14y agoWe have a proper machine in the office and some people still drink ugh instant. At least with a machine like we are discussing people will drink a better standard of coffee than they otherwise would.
- ahoge 14y ago>some people still drink [...] instant They probably just don't know how to operate the machine.
- hartror 14y agoHence me saying that a automatic machine isn't the worst thing in the world . . .
- jaredmcateer 14y agoI actually know people that prefer the taste of instant. I think it's one of those things where if you're raised on garbage, you'll like the taste. I know for a long time I though Tim Hortons coffee was the tits.
- smosher 14y agoLoad the beans from underneath using a detachable tray with a mesh inlay which will is used to pull the beans in. (If you must go all out, put a bob that opens a trap in the bottom of the tray so they can't get the water near the machine if they try to fill the tray with it.)
- aptwebapps 14y agoI can easily envisage some people putting water in the bean hopper simply because they couldn't find anywhere else to put it.
- jmvoodoo 14y agoI was going to post something on their site, but apparently you have to have enough karma to give a response now. Use a removable side-loading bean cartridge. The bottom of the cartridge would be mesh, the top open. There would be a spring-loaded door on the side of the cartridge that the machine would open once inserted (or it could be opened via a "lock" lever for a pure mechanical solution) so that beans could flow out. This way it could never be loaded with water, and the beans would stay fresh since once inserted the cartridge would be sealed on top and bottom by the rest of the machine.
- shardling 14y agoThis has already been suggested more than once on the site, which I suppose is exactly why they protected it. :P (Even the joke answers, such as adding a "coffee bean pipe", are already covered in the stackexchange thread.)
- csense 14y agoI actually somehow haven't jumped on the StackOverflow bandwagon yet. If you need karma to reply to questions, how do new users get karma?
- kpreid 14y agoOnly specific questions: “This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site.” It's basically like semi-protection on Wikipedia: things which have gotten a lot of attention can get lots of noise, so only more established users are allowed to add content.
- hermannj314 14y agoThis is full of very serious answers. I thought this was a rhetorical question to highlight the tendency of software developers to mismanage risk. I feel like no matter what the answer is, the questioner could just throw another "But what if..." on top of it. Set a post-it note saying "Water here". But what if a Black Hat gains access to the coffee machine and moves the sign? Etc. You can't win unless you know what the questioner wanted to hear. I guess that makes it a good interview question.
- iaskwhy 14y agoAdding to that, regarding a comment on that thread: "It'll probably still be gotten wrong by the same people who push on 'pull' doors". Culture is very important. In my native language, 'push' actually means pull! I will always get that wrong unless the design is good, meaning there's only one handle and it's on the side you actually need to pull. If there's an handle and the word 'push' just by its side than I'm going to pull it no matter what.
- stevvooe 14y agoFrench press, anyone?
- alistairSH 14y agoKeurig machine in the kitchen here. I'm sure it offends the coffee-snobs, but it works for me (I drink tea, not coffee, so just use it for hot water).
- stevvooe 14y agoNo offense taken ;). It's just that there is a lot of thought wasted solving a derivative problem that could be avoided by continuing to use a simpler solution to the first order problem. This is classical overengineering. At the same time, any good solution to the coffee problem will likely have to find a tuned balance between a number of traits and they will be different for each person. There are certain abstract tradeoffs that aren't taken into account in the OP (if I remember correctly). In the case of the keurig machine, it solves the complexity and convenience by narrowing flexibility, increasing expense and maybe sacrificing taste (which are all completely valid tradeoffs). The french press or a ceramic dripper maintain the flexibility, expense, taste and minimize complexity at the cost of convenience.
- dear 14y agoJust give everyone a training course for using the machine.
- oelmekki 14y agoI have a saeco odea, they designed the bean recipient so it looks more like a curved plate than a bottle : http://imgur.com/CJzJLQ3 http://imgur.com/CJzJLQ3 . I think it's quite obvious to the user you don't put water in this. On the other side, the water tank is a bit hidden, being inside the machine, behind an opaque face. Making it transparent would probably help.
- D_Alex 14y agoSo... Where I used to work, someone once put milk in the water container, 'cos they thought that's how you get frothed milk.
- obeattie 14y agoI don't know what goes on inside the coffee bean hopper, but fundamentally I can't see why one couldn't just prevent the machine from breaking if the user does make a mistake. The machine could then warn the user of their error and allow them to correct it. They'd soon get the idea.
- TelmoMenezes 14y agoMake holes in the beans compartment that are too small for the beans. That would make it very obvious that pouring water there is pointless.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- perlgeek 14y agoI'd put a transparent foil on the beans container that shows, well, coffee beans. That way it should be obvious what it's used for, even if it's empty.
- 8ig8 14y agoWhat about making the coffee receptacle resilient to water? Let the water filter through the bean mechanism without damage. Catch the water in that bin under the cup. Worse case you overflow the bin, but you learned a lesson and didn't break the coffee maker.
- snarfy 14y ago"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot- proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." The machine is fine. Your users are broken. Make the person that destroyed the machine pay for it.
- CyberDroiD 14y agoI don't understand this: "Typical coffee machines have two user-accessible compartments - one for water and one for coffee beans". No they do not. Most "Typical coffee machines" require ground beans in a basket. The coffee maker described as typical is actually something I have never seen before. Try a Kuerig if you want a cool coffee maker! But they again are not "typical coffee machines".
- dsr_ 14y agoThe coffee machine I have in my house does not have this problem. It is a very common machine, and there are many like it. Here's one much like it: http://www.mrcoffee.com/Product.aspx?pid=7645 http://www.mrcoffee.com/Product.aspx?pid=7645 You take the carafe out. You fill it full of water. You open up the top of the coffee machine, and you have a choice: You can pour water into the reservoir, or you can pour it through the filter basket and thus on to THE FLOOR because the carafe is in your hand. People learn quickly how to use it. Here's a commercial one with a similar lack of problems: http://www.amazon.com/33200-0015-VPR-2GD-Pourover-Commercial-Decanters/dp/B0037XIP22 http://www.amazon.com/33200-0015-VPR-2GD-Pourover-Commercial... The water goes in the top. In order to load ground beans you have to pull out the filter basket. No confusion possible. Trying to pour water into the filter basket results in water on the floor. Instant feedback.
- xauronx 14y agoThe coffee machines in question have a container for un-ground beans which are ground internally and brewed. So your interaction with the machine is limited to adding beans, adding water, pressing a button (and 90% of the time it's just pressing the button since it holds enough beans&water for several brews).
- veemjeem 14y agoYou're just linking to an average drip machine, which obviously doesn't have these problems, but it doesn't help the stackoverflow user who had the original question. The machines he was asking about have a separate container that stores beans that are automatically ground. These are fully automatic machines where you push a button and coffee comes out, no interaction is needed by the user, and yet the user will sometimes "think" action is required and will mistakenly fill the bean storage with water. Your "commercial" drip machine is probably only a few hundred dollars at most, but the fully automatic machines are in the thousands of dollars, so repair is pretty expensive.
- silasb 14y agoWhy not actually fix the problem. If people put water into the bean compartment then don't kill the machine. How you ask: Water bypass valve used in Cold Air Intakes to prevent your engine from drinking water. https://www.google.com/search?q=cold+air+intake&hl=en&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=jHASUZbeIu-r0AH9wYCICw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&biw=1284&bih=963#hl=en&tbo=d&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=cold+air+intake+water+bypass&oq=cold+air+intake+water+bypass&gs_l=img.3..0i24.1765.3328.8.3451.8.0.8.0.5.0.0.0..0.0...0.0...1c.1.2.img.uCfNDZ3ng_o&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41934586,d.dmQ&fp=83efe7823b09c1df&biw=1284&bih=963 https://www.google.com/search?q=cold+air+intake&hl=en...
- vaidhy 14y agoMake the hopper transparent and stick the picture of beans to it so that it looks like it is filled with beans. It makes it obvious and gives an immediate adverse reaction to someone trying to pour water.
- gcb0 14y agoAs someone who actually has a major in product design, that link and this thread is pure gold! I'm getting the same dark satisfaction as if I were reading how to write your own encryption algo at phpscripts.com ...time to make some popcorn.
- niccl 14y agoFor lots of stuff along these lines, Donald Norman's Design of Everyday Things is highly recommended.