Iron Skillet Roaster
About Company
Iron Skillet Coffee as the name suggests is a small coffee business started by Jeff Smith in 2020. Iron Skillet’s traditional process involves roasting coffee beans in a cast iron skillet which is a manual and time-consuming process that creates a unique blend of flavors that today's most widespread methods of roasting use a rotating drum or hot air bed cannot replicate.
For this project, my team and I worked with the owner to create and design an automated solution that fits Iron Skillet’s unique method and can be used for sale to small-scale clients in the future.
Objective
The objective of this project was to develop a cost-effective, automated flatbed cast iron coffee roaster that is suitable for small businesses and can help them go through the roasting process more efficiently while also improving product quality. To achieve this, I led the iron skillet team to evaluated the cost of building the roaster and designed a sysyem to automate the process using two personalized interfaces.
The optimized roaster design entails incorporating digital technologies to ensure seamless functionality of the roaster through these two interfaces, one would be connected to the roaster, and another, a supporting mobile app to analyse and control the roaster while away from the system. The design prioritizes user-friendliness and intuitiveness to enable operators to use the machine with ease and without requiring technical expertise.
Problem Statement
To develop a cost-effective, automated iron skillet roaster suitable for small businesses and can help them go through the roasting process more efficiently while improving product quality.
Goals
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Calculate the financial expense associated with the product
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Design two interfaces, a cellular interface & one that would connect to the product
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Modify parts of the product to make it more functional and cost efficientand
Role
Team Lead
UX Researcher
UX/UI Designer
Tools
Project Scale
Figma
Autocad
Solidworks
4 months
Project Approach
Market Research
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Competitive analysis over cost of other commercial coffee roasters in the market with same specifications
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Solidwork analysis of dimensions used in the product model designed by previous team
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We analysed the existing connected interface designs used by commercial roaster and studied the roaster functionality
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Researched 4 competitive coffee roasting apps: Professional coffee roasting app, Coffee Roaster Free app, etc
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To understand what buttons & what features to add: ‘add new bean’, ‘bean inventory’, and different settings for the roasting (fan speed, temp, etc.)
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Persona
Journey Map
Concept Map
Our concept map showcase the process we went under to accomplish the goals for the project in allotted timeframe. This involves designing conducting maket research, analysis, designing interface, interating and delivering the final prototypes.
Connecting Interface
For the connecting interface design, our goal was to create a display that will facilitate Jeff's currently manual steps in the process of roasting with automation via an a easy to use interface. During the course of the projects there were three different iterations of the interfaces with the final high-fidelity version. The first two iterations are the lo-fi wireframes that were iterated based on feedback from our target persona and pain points that needed to be addressed.
Lo-fi wireframes
Mid-fi wireframes
Use case: Roasting from an existing profile
Use case: Creating a new roasting profile
High-Fidelity Wireframes and Prototype
Iterating through the design thinking process and implementing feedback received by Jeff throughout the process , we made final changes to create high-fidelity wireframes and a prototype fo usability testing. You can view the full clickable prototype on Figma here.
Use case: Roasting from an existing profile
Use case: Creating a new roasting profile
Mobile Interface
We designed a supporting mobile interface that allows the roaster to make canges and edit the same features as the connecting interface while away from the machine. Additionally, we included features to modify coffeee recipes, take notes, access their inventory and roasting profile. You can view the full prototype for the mobile interface here
Next Steps
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For the connecting interface - Determine how the interfaces will be interconnected via bluetooth and develop the software for connecting and mobile interfaces
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Cost analysis - Find a more accurate pricing for the iron skillet component and redesign motor and stirring component to be coming from the top down
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Mobile Interface - Thoroughly testing all the interaction with the target audience (e.g. color changes of buttons when the cursor hovers over it, scrolling through a screen, or prototyping the carousel/slider screen).