Almost like a Minecraft-esque representation of your coffee cup, Coffee Composer has a unique way of letting you build your cup of coffee. The Coffee Composer is a coffee maker with a twist. Rather than following the mundane process of tapping away at a touchscreen to build your cup of coffee, fumbling with the janky UI, Coffee Composer has a unique, foolproof way of letting you ‘compose’ your cuppa.

The Coffee Composer comes with practically no interface. It does, however, come with a collection of ingredient tokens, ranging from different types of milk, to sugar, coffee, and even foam. Just layer the tokens one above the other to create your unique coffee composition (the color-coded tokens even end up visually representing your coffee cup). Place the tokens on the Coffee Composer, and an empty cup underneath and you’re ready to go. Each individual token is, in fact, an NFC tag that is read by the coffee machine. The machine reads the tokens one by one, dispensing ingredients one after another into your cup. You can play with the quantity of tokens based on your tastes (two sugar tokens for extra sugar, three milk tokens for three pumps of milk, a mixture of tokens for half-and-half), and top off everything with the foam token to add a layer of froth to your deliciously bespoke beverage. A single display on the machine shows you the price of your cup, and a corresponding card-zone lets you tap to make a payment. How elegant!

Designers: Xinyue Yang & Antonia Nandori