Here's something interesting. Melbourne Design Week 2025 chose 'Design the World You Want' as its theme. That's a big question for anyone creating spaces, especially café owners.
Think about it. What questions do you ask before you design something?
Over 100,000 people showed up to 350+ events across Melbourne and regional Victoria between May 15 and 24. Everyone came together around one idea: the best design starts with the right questions, not quick answers.
For Melbourne's coffee scene (which, let's be honest, we're pretty proud of), this matters more than you might think.
Why Questions Matter More Than Answers
Melbourne's café culture isn't famous just because we make great coffee. Although we definitely do.
We're known because our hospitality spaces actually think about what people need. Not what we assume they want, but what they genuinely need from a gathering place.
Palace Coffee just won Best Café Design at the 2025 Eat Drink Design Awards. The judges said it embodied "everything we love about Melbourne's coffee culture: understated, design-led and full of quiet confidence."
That confidence? It comes from asking the right questions before anyone draws a single design sketch.
Workplace Coffee Is Changing
Melbourne Design Week ran sessions like 'From Amenity to Experience: Hospitality and the Evolving Workplace.' These conversations dig into how hybrid work has completely changed what people expect from workplace coffee culture.
We can't keep designing spaces based on old assumptions. Things have shifted too much.
How to Ask Better Questions About Design
Melbourne's best hospitality venues use structured ways to ask questions. Here are the most useful ones.
The "How Might We" Method
This questioning technique opens up creative solutions without losing focus. Instead of "How do we increase morning turnover?", try asking "How might we create morning rituals that bring customers back daily?"
See the difference? One feels like a business problem. The other feels like an opportunity.
Ask Why Five Times
Surface problems hide deeper issues. When a café struggles with quiet afternoons, keep asking why.
Why are afternoons slow? Office workers don't come back. Why not? The seating feels uncomfortable for laptop work. Why? Tables were set up for quick morning service. Why? We focused only on peak hour efficiency. Why? Because we never asked what afternoon customers actually need.
Now we're getting somewhere.
Talk to Real People
Melbourne's café market is competitive. The insights that matter come from open questions that invite honest answers, not polite ratings.
Ask customers about their actual experiences. Listen to what they say, and what they don't say.
Five Questions Every Melbourne Café Needs to Ask
Research on customer relationships shows five questions that reveal what surveys miss:
- What caught your attention when you first heard about us? This shows the emotional hook that made people visit. It's often something completely different from what you'd guess.
- What makes you hesitate to come back? People rarely volunteer complaints. Ask directly and you'll get honest feedback.
- What does buying from us do for you that doesn't happen elsewhere? This reveals the real value your café provides in people's lives.
- What would you miss most if we closed? The answer tells you what's truly irreplaceable about your space.
- What made you come back a second time? First visits create curiosity. Second visits create habits. Understanding this shift is crucial.
These questions really matter in Melbourne. Our customers actively judge design quality. Our complete coffee services need to keep evolving to meet these sophisticated expectations.
Design Questions That Actually Work
Beyond customer insights, you need to ask tough questions about how your space actually operates:
- How do peak hours affect your space needs? Morning queues need completely different flow compared to afternoon laptop workers or evening social groups.
- What customer types use your space? The freelancer needing WiFi has opposite needs to the parent with toddlers or the professional meeting clients.
- Where do staff waste time and energy? Baristas walk unnecessary distances hundreds of times daily. Cut three steps per coffee and you save hours of physical strain each week.
- What design elements do regular customers love? That worn timber bench or the afternoon light might be your venue's soul. Worth keeping regardless of trends.
Think About Future Generations
Melbourne Design Week pushed a provocative idea: seven-generations thinking. Don't just ask "What's cheapest today?" Ask "What will seven generations inherit from this choice?"
For coffee, this changes everything.
Sustainable Sourcing Gets Real
The question shifts from "What's the cheapest green bean?" to "What farming practices ensure coffee exists for our grandchildren?"
That's a fundamentally different conversation.
Materials That Last
Instead of "What finishes look current?", designers should ask "What materials can be reclaimed or composted when this fitout eventually changes?"
Community Spaces That Matter
Not "How do we maximise revenue per square metre?" but "What does this neighbourhood need that doesn't currently exist?"
Victoria's creative economy contributed $41.1 billion in 2023-24. It employed 343,623 creative workers. These questions carry serious economic weight, not just ethical considerations.
How to Actually Use This Approach
Turning Melbourne Design Week insights into reality needs structure. Here's how.
Research First, Design Second
Don't sketch solutions before you understand the problem thoroughly. Develop question frameworks that address customer needs, staff workflows, operations, and community impact before you think about aesthetics.
Turn Research Into Action
Research only helps when it shapes decisions. Document insights as specific requirements. "Afternoon customers need varied seating for 2-4 hour stays" becomes a design requirement, not just an observation.
Keep Questioning Throughout
As designs develop, test decisions against your original questions. When something emerges from aesthetic preference rather than answering a need, interrogate whether it truly serves your purpose.
Check If It Actually Worked
The final question: "Did this design deliver what we promised?" Evaluate after opening. This completes the learning cycle and informs future projects with evidence instead of assumptions.
What Makes Melbourne Different
Melbourne's café culture stands out globally. But it's not just because of aesthetic innovation.
Our design excellence comes from rigorous, empathetic questions. Questions that reveal what customers truly value. What staff genuinely need. What communities require from gathering spaces.
The cafés that last aren't the ones with the most Instagrammable fitouts. They're the spaces designed by people who asked better questions.
People who understood that a café's purpose goes way beyond caffeine delivery. It's about daily rituals, community connections, and third places that make urban life work.
Design Creates Worlds
Melbourne Design Week's theme poses a question to every hospitality professional: What world are your design decisions creating?
Worth thinking about, isn't it?
Transform Your Workplace Coffee Experience
Melbourne Design Week 2025 showed that exceptional café experiences start with asking the right questions. Questions about what your team and clients genuinely need.
Ready to transform your workplace coffee culture with the same rigour that defines Melbourne's award-winning hospitality design? Explore our workplace coffee solutions across Melbourne.
We'll start by asking questions that matter. Questions about your team's rituals, your space's potential, and the coffee experience that makes your workplace somewhere people actually want to gather.
Published by Joey Krosch
