Cybercoffee
At a Glance
Coffee machines have some of the most forgettable interfaces in the world. I wanted to push that mundanity somewhere visually specific — a retro-futuristic interface controlled entirely by six physical side buttons, with CRT scanlines and a Digital-7 readout pulled straight from a sci-fi film. Designed in Figma, rebuilt pixel-perfect in HTML, then modeled into a full 3D machine in Blender so it could actually sit on a counter.
Design process
1Brushed aluminium, a stark digital typeface and a CRT-era colour palette set the tone — but the goal was never nostalgia for its own sake. Every material and type choice had to keep the machine reading as familiar and futuristic at once.
How the machine came together — from the first rough shape to the finished build.
Materials stay deliberately minimal: brushed aluminium for the body, white plastic for the buttons and handles, with a hint of red on the interface controls to match the display's own black-and-red palette.
Every one of the six side buttons maps to a single dedicated action — the whole point was to design out arrow keys and confirm presses entirely, so each click simply moves you to what's next.
Final result
2Boot it up and you land on an always-on display showing what's left in the beans, water, and milk. Press any button and you're straight into the drink menu — every screen here runs on one rule: each of the six side buttons does a single dedicated thing, so a press always moves you forward, with no arrow keys or confirm button anywhere in the system. From there, drop into a saved preset or configure a drink from scratch — milk, water, beans — tracking your progress along the top bar, and saving the setup as a new preset while it brews. A few details reward using it for real: the side chevrons light up red the moment a button becomes actionable, a wrong press shakes the display instead of just sitting there, and you can set a wake-up timer for the first cup tomorrow morning.