Keurig's tiny new coffee maker is cute enough to keep on your counter
Briefly

Morgan Lombardi, Keurig's senior director of product management, highlighted the evolving consumer demands for coffee makers that feel less mechanical and bulky. The newly introduced K-Mini Mate, a compact 4-inch-wide brewer, is intended to enhance the morning coffee ritual. Keurig discovered that users often perceived coffee-making as a chore, emphasizing the need for designs that integrate seamlessly into smaller kitchen spaces. The redesign addresses practical constraints while also ensuring that the coffee-making process feels enjoyable rather than mechanical by improving the puncture mechanism for K-Cup pods.
Morgan Lombardi, Keurig's senior director of product management, believes pod coffee makers have become too big, too mechanical, and maybe even a little bit ugly.
Lombardi tells me she observed that people were starting to view their morning brew routine as an obligation rather than a moment of pleasure.
Both were hard challenges, she says, because the current puncturing mechanisms for Keurig's brewers are too unwieldy to allow for a subtler, smaller design.
The most significant technical challenge to achieve the smaller footprint involved redesigning what Keurig calls the puncture mechanism.
Read at Fast Company
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