My kitchen mixer has 3 buttons, 2 dials and a simple display. It can do some stuff, like cook for a certain number of minutes or beat at a certain speed. Simply put, it can do one thing and then has to be set to do another thing.

Why is it not programmable? Why can’t I set it to kneed and heat the dough 4 hours before I rise in the morning?

To be honest, I would not want it to have a user interface to solve all the situations I would come up with since I have seen how bad it is when hardware people try to solve a programming problem. Just look at your car, how much did you pay for the navigator that is both clunky and out of date compared to the google maps you have on your phone? Or think of the kids’ toy that started as a wifi connected state-of-the-art thing to play with but ended as a hacker’s dream with an attached camera.

So instead let all the motors and servos in the machine have a well known (bluetooth) interface. Then connect your phone or have a cheap android phone attached to the machine with for instance magnets. Cheap. Easy replacable. Updatable.

Now your Kenwood mixer can kneed and let the dough rise and the Siemens oven can be started in time for your Electrolux coffee brewer aroma accelerated wake up. These three slow turning kitchen appliance giants don’t have to learn how to cooperate but you can teach their stuff to do.

Your phone is typically set to lock its screen after a minute or so of not touching it.
This is really a problem when trying to follow a recipe.

Why not write an app that complements the Flight mode, Movie mode, Meeting mode and Whatnot modes there are, with a Recipe mode.

This Recipe mode, in its simplest solution would just turn of locking and turning off the screen. In a more advanced solution it would lock the screen but let the web page with the recipe still be on and scrollable.