About this project

Descaling Your Nespresso Machine is a procedural guide that was inspired by user feedback (including my own!) on the descaling process for the VertuoPlus machine.

Disclaimer: This is a personal project, and does not reflect the views or work of Nespresso.

The Problem

Nespresso is an incredible product—bought a machine in 2020, and continue to use it daily. I struggled with their technical documentation though, specifically for descaling your machine, and usually ended up in the comments of a YouTube video trying to find another user's steps in order to accomplish my goal.

Here were some of the pain points I found:

• Inconsistent terminology: The VertuoPlus machine was referenced as "Vertuo Plus" (two words) on their YouTube page, and referenced as "VertuoPlus" (one word) on their official website. I chose to style it as "VertuoPlus" throughout the document for consistency.
• Steps as notes and signals (warnings/caution): Their notes and signals were part of the steps, weren't distintive, and blended in with the rest of the information, which caused it to be very hard to read.
• Lack of context: In their online guide for descaling, it jumped right into the steps of descaling the machine, without providing context to users. What is descaling? How does the user know it's time to descale? What does the user need to descale? Some of this information is provided in some of the notes and signals, but it's very hard to spot without proper headings and callouts.
• Lack of images: In Nespresso's online user guide, they often referenced buttons, but did not introduce these buttons in the guide or link to another reference. To solve this, Nespresso could repurpose the product overview image in their user guide.

The Solution

• Added headings: Headings are a great way to organize information, and prevents the user from feeling overwhelmed with information overload.
• Added more context: Context provides the user with an idea of what the procedure will walk them through.
• Used consistent names and terminology: Using consistent names (for products), and consistent terminology for functions (like buttons), removes user doubt and confusion.
• Distinct notes and signals (warnings/caution): Ensuring your notes and signals are separate from your steps and can be easy to spot (using colours or different formatting) allows the user to easily identify important information.
• Table of contents: Google Docs already has this feature built in, but having descriptive headings in your table of contents (or a mini TOC) helps users quickly find the information they need.

Challenges/Takeaways

• Having hands-on experience as a user, and getting feedback from other users (from the YouTube comments) was helpful to validate decisions, and remove biases.
• This exercise reinforced the importance of providing required information to the user whenever possible. As a user, I didn't know the top "dispense" button was called Coffee, until I looked at Nespresso's official user guide.