JURA A8: Designing for the Next Decade
ID
JURA A8
How do you move an established design language forward without losing what people already value about it?
The challenge
REFRAME designed the JURA A8. That came with real responsibility. JURA already has a clear design language, decades of product history, and a very particular idea of what one of its machines should be.
At the same time, the context around the product is changing. More people are living in smaller urban homes. The A8 responds to that with a body only 19 cm wide, making it JURA's slimmest fully automatic coffee machine.
Width was only one part of the challenge. The question we ended up working on with JURA was a different one.
What will still feel right ten years from now?
Making something look new is relatively easy. Making it feel fresh today, familiar to the brand and still relevant years from now is much harder.
JURA knew its brand, customers and technology deeply. We came in with a different perspective and permission to push.
There were ideas that went too far. Others were too familiar. We kept moving between the two, challenging each other until something new could still feel unmistakably JURA.
That collaboration mattered. Since we do not design the A8 in a vacuum. That is usually where we start our projects. A brief arrives with a clear ambition, and the first work is agreeing on what it has to achieve. Which constraints are real, and which are habit.
Designing the ritual
Some of the most interesting work happened around parts that could easily have remained just that: parts. The cup platform was one of them.
We started thinking about the few seconds before the coffee arrives. You place the cup down. Your fingers meet the machine. You see the surface up close. There is weight, texture, sound and movement.
What should that moment feel like?
The same attention went into the area around the bean container. JURA itself highlights the cup grill and crystal-inspired bean container as elements that bring order and character to the machine while keeping its presence restrained.
Something you can actually feel
More and more of what we use is becoming digital. We tap glass. We speak to software. AI increasingly sits between us and the things we want to do. Physical products can offer something different.
Texture. Resistance. Temperature. Sound. Movement.
Coffee already has aroma, heat and ritual built into it. The machine should contribute to that experience.
The greatest ideas are whispers
During the development of the cup platform and bean container, there was a point where one direction suddenly felt right. It was closer to a small voice saying: that's the one.
I've noticed this repeatedly in design. A good process gets you far. You research, sketch, model, prototype, question and refine. Then the important decisions start getting very small.
A proportion changes. A transition becomes cleaner. Something feels better in your hand. Or you realise there is nothing left to add.
These ideas can be easy to dismiss because they rarely arrive fully formed. You need enough attention to notice them, and enough patience to see whether they deserve to survive.
Sometimes I find them while working directly on the object. Sometimes I need distance: a walk, a museum, a café, something completely unrelated to the project. That distance is part of the process too.
The result
The finished A8 is only 19 cm wide, carries JURA's premium technology and was designed to sit naturally in contemporary living spaces.
For me, its success lies in something harder to measure. It feels new, and it still feels like JURA.
Great products rarely come from one big idea. They emerge through hundreds of small decisions, and a few whispers worth listening to.
