BrewMeister
Graduate Product Design Project
This project was an exercise in product design and manufacturing with some business techniques geared toward future inventors and entrepreneurs. We were to design a product or service to fulfill a need of an average person. Our device was an All-in-One Coffee Maker that roasts, grinds, and brews coffee from raw beans. The BrewMeister would brew a freshly roasted, high-quality cup of coffee at home without roasting beans in an oven or waiting at a coffee shop. This business model would allow coffee bean farmers to sell their product directly to the coffee drinker without the industrial processing and extra shipments.
We started with concept sketches to identify details of each step of the coffee making process. We gathered many options for components and down-selected the methods of heating, grinding, and filtering. The device also needed to be aesthetically pleasing and the user interface to be simple and easy to navigate. The front touch screen allowed the user to change the roast, grind, and brew settings that also could be saved for later. The mobile app allowed you to operate the device over Bluetooth or wi-fi and scan coffee bean packages for automatic input of roasting or brewing parameters.
We worked collectively on the design, component selection, and other steps in the design phases. I was tasked with the user interface and mobile app design. Although we created a model of the prototype, we did not fabricate our device. This course advanced our skills in product and process design and taught us to integrate marketing and business strategy into our product development.