Nescafe Azera YCN // Development

At this stage, we needed to focus on the specifics of the product and home down the exact requirements of the brief. We focused on the 1st portion of the brief which was all about creating a product innovation within the instant coffee market:

1. Product innovation

Our system for dispensing coffee from its packaging using a twisting mechanism fits this request really well, as it presents significant advantages over traditional packaging:

-Dispenses the perfect amount of coffee

-Removes the need for a spoon

-evokes the sensation of grinding beans, which we associate with better coffee. 

-Reduced, and refillable packaging

This already placed limitations on the shape of the packaging, as to do this most efficiently you would need a hollow cylindrical shape in two parts, as there would need to be some kind of mechanism for twisting. 

Focusing on taking this idea forward and making it a feasable alteration to packaging, I worked at figuring out a design for the mechanism that would dispense the same amount of coffee for every twist of the box. 

We settled on this solution, which used gravity to keep filling one chamber with coffee and another is emptied. This simple approach would just use selective cuts in layers of the packaging and would be much much cheaper than using mechanical parts or gears. I made an exploded diagram for our boards demonstrating this construction:

While I was working on this, Sam was looking at the design of the packaging, as the appearance is just as important to consumers as the functionality. We arrived at the idea of having half the packaging coloured and the other half as brown recycled stock. This would feed into the concept of twisting. He explored a few variations of this concept:

We finally settled on a diagonal colouring - a much better visualisation of 'instant coffee' with a twist:

The bottom section would lift out and present an upside-down refill sign, reminding them to turn the packaging over. 

From here, we explored a lot of extra details, such as indicators that would mark how far the packaging needs to be twisted. One thing we thought would be vital for this brief is shelf presence, as a lot of instant coffee products look the same. Our solution for this was to vary the direction that the boxes face to create patterns of colour. We expanded this concept to the lids as well. so that more intricate patterns could be create by stacking the boxes on their side. 

sideways stacking patterns

alternate patterns from upright packaging. 

This solution helps us meet section 2 of the brief - creating instore promotion, and does it in a way which can be easily implemented without additional cost by just varying the arrangement of the boxes. These patterns will also change naturally as they are lifted from the shelves by customers.