Assumptions :

I assume the coffee machine that we are talking about is a regular machine(I’ll refer to the one that I use) in which the user can choose which type of coffee he wants and it gets dispensed.
What do you mean by improvement? Let me assume we want to add new users to the machine and increase engagement for the ones who are using it.

User groups : Let me group users by the usage :

1. High usage: These are the people who drink 3-4 cups of coffee per day.
2. Moderate usage: They drink 1 coffee per day.
3. Low usage: They never used the machine or drink 1-2 coffee per week on average.

1. They don’t know how the machine works so they never actually tried getting coffee from it.
2. People who don’t like coffee.
3. Sometimes the queue for coffee is too long so don’t want to wait to get coffee.
4. Don’t know which coffee to drink out of all options and don’t want to experiment.
5. The coffee that gets dispensed is of fixed quantity so users with big mugs have to perform the same operation multiple times.

1. When the machine is not being used or is in standby mode we can show steps on the screen as a screen saver, this will reduce the hesitation for a new user about using the machine for the first time. (Not much effort is required and is of high user value)
2. For people who don’t like coffee, we can add alternate options like tea or hot milk/water and provide additional sachets to use with it. (High effort required and is of high customer value).
3. We can make an app and integrate it with our coffee machine, we can add features like showing coffee machines which are not being used, personalized user experience of each user with their preferences set in the machine, they can put their order in the app and just put a code in the machine to get their order instead of setting their choice in the machine. (Very high effort and engineering required and  moderate customer value)
4. On the screen of machine, we can suggest coffees which are ordered the most number of times, making it easy for people to make a choice. (Not much effort and moderate customer value)
5. We can add an additional option on the machine which allows people to select quantity(small, medium, large) and temperature of the coffee, improving user experience and satisfaction. (High effort required and high customer value).

I would like to spend sometime in understanding the problem, then explore the users and their use cases. I will follow up with their pain points and how to improve by recommending some features.

What kind of machines are we talking here? I am thinking about the self serve machines where you can customize and select how much coffee shots to use for making coffee

What do mean by improve coffee machines here ? It can be couple of things like improving the user experience/interaction of making coffee using this machine or improving the type of coffee this machine makes. Do you have anything specific in mind? If not I will like to go ahead with user experience/interaction.

Goal: Improve User experience/Interaction

Users: Active users – Coffee lovers in Office, Passive users – who don’t drink coffee but like coffee flavour

Use case/ User journey:

• Employee want to go and have coffee just after lunch/evening or in between work – long waiting time/not sure how many people are waiting in for coffee
• Generally coffee machine allow 1 coffee at a time. This also adds to the wait time for making coffee
• limited set of options, does not cater to non coffee drinks
• accessibility issue – how will people on wheelchair or vision problem can access coffee

• Waiting time – have a app integrated with the coffee machine. The app will have following features:
  • Employees will create their profile in the app. The app can be used to raise a request for ordering a coffee
  • User can specify their choice of coffee or preference and when they usually have it
  • App to use coffee, app will notify user which coffee machine is available and what is the wait time, along with time it will take to go and collect the coffee from the users current location
• Variation of coffee choices –
  • This will require changes to coffee machine. The machine will have choice on American/Italian and other famous category of coffee recipe.
  • Multiple coffee bean selection and the machine can also support multiple coffee orders at the same time
• Accessibility –
  • Voice support will be provided in the app to support coffee order
  • Special service will be provided for collecting the coffee once the order is placed.

Based on the above, my recommendation is to go with solving the waiting time feature. That is completely in our control along with support for accessibility.