Dear Coffee Maker, It’s You, Not Me
For a long time, I brewed my coffee in the mornings with a Chemex. It’s beautiful on my kitchen counter and the coffee tastes great, but it’s really time consuming to make a pot of coffee. I didn’t feel like going through all of the prep work and carefully weighing everything out every morning before class anymore. I think it became clear I was getting tired of the Chemex when I stopped taking the time to remove the wood collar and leather tie for washings.
Enter the Brazen Plus Temperature Control Coffee Maker. Yes, it’s an automatic coffee maker, and it makes me coffee. It can even brew 8 cups at once! And it’s tastes decent. You can calibrate it to adjust for high altitude, which is useful here in Boulder, Colorado. It has a pre-soak option to allow the coffee to bloom, as you would do when brewing with the Chemex. While it’s heating up the water, it displays the water temperature, so you can count down to when it will start brewing your coffee. I usually don’t see this part since I set a timer to start brewing before I wake up, so there’s hot coffee when I get up in the morning.
In terms of user experience, I think the coffee maker could use some improvement. I have Don Norman on my side to remind me that any problems that I have are probably the design’s fault and not mine. First, there are eight of the same exact button. They’re each labeled, but it definitely still requires an instruction manual. The buttons could benefit from a different layout and some differentiation between them. It’s easy to forget which button you’re pressing, and whether you’re pressing the right one. One button labeled “On/Off” doesn’t actually turn it on nor off — it’s a mislabelled “Cancel” button.
Second, the display emits a constant blue light. Why can’t it just turn off? I don’t need a night light. If it displayed the time without lighting the entire screen, like a normal appliance, I could still tell that it’s on. When the coffee maker goes into power save mode after a few minutes of inactivity, the light dims slightly. You press any button to bring it into an active, bright mode. When the first problem in the troubleshooting section of your manual is to explain something is normal, it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Last, the carafe needs to placed in just the right spot to get your coffee into the pot. The first time I used the machine, coffee dribbled everywhere. Now, I keep a towel next to the machine. It would be better if it provided some kind of feedback to let me know the carafe is positioned correctly. I have to visually check if it’s correct. The coffee maker is not perfect, but I’ll stick with it for now.
