Coffee Roasting and Design
The importance of practicing and failing fast on the journey to become a craftsman
I recently had the pleasure of visiting and interviewing Steve Hall, co-founder of Tinker Coffee Co. in Indianapolis. Tinker was founded in 2014 and ever since has been roasting, in my opinion, the best coffee in Indiana. Wondering what roasting coffee is? Check this article out they can explain it much better than me.
In 2014, after graduating from IU, I moved back to Indianapolis for work. Like a lot of people, I started working and I started drinking coffee, gone were the days of sleeping in until 11. I quickly found that I liked learning about coffee and visiting the various coffee shops around Indianapolis. I couldn’t do this every morning though, four dollar cups of coffee add up quickly. So I purchased an Aeropress, electric kettle, and hand grinder and started my journey into third wave coffee at home. I wanted to find the best beans in Indy and ended up making my way over to Tinker during lunch one day. I introduced myself to Steve and he showed me how they roast their coffee and helped me pick out a bag of coffee from Ethiopia I might like. I remember the next day making my coffee in the morning and it was one of the best tasting drinks I have ever enjoyed.
Skip forward two years and I haven’t looked back, trying as many different coffees and brewing techniques as I can. For one of my classes (I’m a graduate student at IU studying HCI/d) this semester we were tasked with writing a paper about any topic, as long as we could relate it back in some way to HCI. I decided to explore the relationship between craftsmanship in coffee and beer and what we can learn from these two fields as designers (to be honest, I just wanted an excuse to be able to hang out with and interview the people who make some of my favorite coffee and beer). I reached out to Steve again and he said he would be happy to let me interview him for the project.
Roasting as a craft
When I showed up to interview Steve it was immediately apparent just how passionate he is about coffee and sharing information with people, a trait I’ve found to be pretty common with people I consider to be craftsmen. One of the things I was most interested in finding out with this conversation is what the process was to get from beginners at roasting to making great coffee. The answer was straightforward, “we just started roasting and sending coffees to friends and family members to see if they liked it,” failing fast and often. We’ve discussed this concept at length this semester in my classes that trial and error is necessary to mastering a craft; which I believe design is. I think, as a designer, it is important to remember this; that I constantly have to be practicing in order to keep getting better.
Steve explained to me how roasting works and it was so apparent how much time he had spent understanding and learning the nuances of coffee. One thing I’ve noticed interviewing brewers and roasters the past couple weeks is just how willing they are to share information with people. I think of this as the craftsmen’s ethic, as you get better and learn more it’s also your duty to give back to people who want to learn. In design I think this takes the from of mentorship.
Side note: Part of what makes hanging around craftsmen great is how much they want to pass on knowledge about what they are passionate about. This is a great example:
Roaster-Computer Interaction
As Steve told me more about how Tinker operates, I was left wondering what kinds of technology could fit in to a process like this? So much of what Steve told me about roasting is that you have to go by feel, watching the temperature gauges and making adjustments on the fly — something human beings are very good at. Roasting coffee is so dependent on previous experiences, tacit knowledge. So where can technology fit in to this, or should it at all? Well, turns out, Tinker already uses a piece of software called Typica to assist in the roasting process. The software visualizes and stores temperature data during the roasting process. I think this is a brilliant system. The computer takes on the task that it’s good at, it tracks and stores data in real time and very precisely. The roaster is then freed up to do what humans do well, generalizing past experiences and current input to control the machines temperature. We discussed how this system takes the laborious process of tracking temperature off the user, and allows for the creativity needed to make great coffee.
I think this is a great example of design for a nuanced user base. Part of what I think makes design difficult is that you can’t truly understand everything your user does. Experts have years of practice and knowledge guiding them, how could I ever understand roasting the way Steve does unless I also roast coffee? I think this is when tools like participatory or co-design can be used to take advantage of the knowledge these users have.
Reflections
So what did I learn from this interview? A whole lot. I was reminded once again the importance of practicing and failing fast on the journey to become a craftsman. Once again I was amazed by how much I can learn by just spending time with someone and how I can use that information for my design. I learned that as designers, sometimes we need the help of our users to understand what they need — co-design.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and please let me know your thoughts!
