There are numerous picky little design issues that I have with the Technivorm Moccamaster. I have one of the thermos pot models, and the lip on the pot, while sleek and stainless, inhibits pouring of coffee into all but the widest mouth containers. Getting it into a travel thermos, forget it. Use a funnel. The fit-up between the plate under the pot and the main body of the machine is fussy, and it needs to be seated right for the thermos to depress the button that tells the coffee maker to work. The water reservoir becomes foggy with condensation if the cover is left on, following brewing…I tend to just open the cover and leave it askew so it can breathe. Finally the design surfacing of the plastic parts would be laughable, if it didn’t recall some crazy laboratory machine.
So - its not all about ‘design’ with the Moccamaster, its more like learning to live with the idiosyncrasies in order to get superior coffee and reliability.