Coffee machine collaboration

Jean-Louis Aubert

A colleague and I once replaced two (broken) coffee machines with two new machines. The new machines cost over €1000 each (about fifteen years ago), and served an office for 12–15 people. Based on our previous ordering history, and cheaper running costs, I calculated that we’d spend so much less per year that we’d cover the cost of the machines after one year. I got it wrong.

Coffee habits

The new coffee machines used coffee beans, instead of proprietary ‘pods’. This change had three main consequences.

1. Coffee beans cost much less per cup than the pods.
2. The coffee from beans tasted much better.
3. The coffee machine’s built-in coffee bean grinder made a lot of noise.

When selecting the new machines, we’d focused on the first two changes, anticipating better value for money. However, we didn’t anticipate the consequences of these changes.

Secondary effects

We justified purchasing the new machines, based on the expected consequence of cheaper coffee: that we would spend less on coffee each year. However, we didn’t expect an additional consequence that changed the return-on-investment calculation. Coffee consumption doubled.

It turned out that it would take two years to cover the cost of the new machines, because I hadn’t accounted for increased consumption. Providing better coffee explained that easily enough, but the machine itself also had an effect.

Collaboration hardware

At the time, I worked in a private office, with the coffee machine a few metres along the corridor outside the door. After a while, I noticed that I always found someone already at the coffee machine when I went to get a cup of coffee. I liked this, and we usually found something to chat about, while we waited for the machine to do its thing.

I had a theory. The machine had trained me to want a coffee when I heard the noisy grinder. When I heard the grinder, I’d get up from my desk, and find someone at the machine because they’d just pressed the button to grind beans and make a coffee. Intriguingly, as well as possibly prompting me to get a coffee, it also set up a short chat with a random colleague.

Hardware upgrade

The next idea probably emerged during a coffee machine chat: lean into the ad hoc collaboration, and upgrade the hardware. We added a whiteboard, and hung it on the wall next to the coffee machine.

Face-to-face conversation offers almost the highest bandwidth communication. Adding a whiteboard increases the bandwidth, even if you don’t think you can draw. We would have put one in the office kitchen as well, if it had had room for one.

Office hotspots

Every office has one or more places where people go to interrupt solo work. For example:

1. coffee machine
2. water cooler
3. snack cupboard
4. beer fridge (in some European countries)
5. outside meeting rooms (to wait until they become free).

If you want an office space to foster collaboration, then every one of these needs a whiteboard. And whiteboard markers. Don’t forget the whiteboard markers.