When Good Design Plays
With Bad Design

I’m a ritualistic coffee drinker. I love it. It’s the nectar of gods. Black coffee, mind you…none of this flavored latte soy sugary melted ice cream coffee that’s become so popular with the kids. So I’m constantly looking for better ways to make a really good, simple cup of black coffee. Enter Eva Solo CafeSolo™, the most gorgeous little piece of caffeine weaponry I’ve ever come across. And the kicker: it makes a damn good cup o’ joe.

I’m not going to go into all the usage instructions of this magical little device (follow the link to get your fill), but I am going to use it as the starting point for my design rant. The Eva Solo CafeSolo™ is visually stunning, yes. But more importantly, it’s overtly functional. And THAT’S what makes it good design. Anyone can make something look good. Looking good + working beautifully = total design bliss.

After receiving my Eva Solo CafeSolo™ from my lovely wife this past Christmas, I realized I needed to buy myself a tea pot. (Well, I didn’t really need to buy one, but I’ll accept any reason to purchase something for the kitchen.) I optimistically skipped out of the house on a sunny Chicago day and began my search for the perfect tea kettle…but was instead bombarded by design suited only for 2-star hotels and nursing homes. Why, tea industry, do you still believe that the only tea drinkers out there are Matlock watchers? And worse yet, why do you believe that the only reason people buy tea kettles is for the home production of tea? I mean, it is just a water boiling device after all, and if college taught me one thing it’s that there are dozens of non-tea-related delicacies out there that are dependent on boiled water. But I digress.

Fast-forward several days into my journey…I found it. The perfect tea pot. This one. (Better photo below.) It’s by the fine folks of OXO, the golden children of overtly functional design. Or so I thought.

The Click Click tea kettle by OXO is stunning. The color is a rich red with a hint of orange, and is perfectly suited for nearly every environment I can think to put it in. There’s an apparent design nod to the aesthetics of the 1970s but without coming off as hokey or at all dated. It is, simply put, a designer’s tea pot. Then I used it.

I began my morning boil with a smile on my face. A handful of minutes later the most horrible squeal I’ve ever heard started spewing forth from my kitchen. I quickly ran over there, sliding around in my slippers, so as to avoid waking the neighbors. Wow… that was horrible. But effective I guess. I pressed the spout flipper trigger thingy, and it popped back so abruptly that the boiling hot condensation underneath the spout shot everywhere. Design flaw #1.

I only boiled the amount of water I knew I’d need for my Eva Solo CafeSolo™ (plus an extra couple ounces) so I wouldn’t waste much energy. (Go green!) This turned out to be an issue due to design flaw #2: if you try to pour out the water at the angle necessary to get to the last remaining ounces you end up pouring directly onto the flipped-up spout!

If you’re reading this, OXO (and I really hope you are), how oh how did you let this tea pot get past the prototyping phase without addressing its seemingly minor but tremendously significant design flaws? You basically have 3 decisions on a product of this nature, and you botched 2 of them.

But it sure does look pretty.

Eva Solo CafeSolo™:

Click Click by OXO: