The “A Bit More” button enters here, at the friction point between good and great toast. When the toast reveals itself to me above the Breville’s chassis, I visually gauge its browness. If insufficient, I press the button, which actuates the basket motor. Down it goes for a brief, return visit to the coil. Then back up again, having been toasted, well, just a bit more.

The button also makes toasting bread, normally a quantitative act, more qualitative. The lever dials in numerical levels of browning, and the “A Bit More” button cuts it with you-know-what-I-mean ambiguity. That dance between numbers and feelings apologizes even for a slightly over-browned slice of toast by endearing the eater to the result the button helped produce.

Sure, I’m talking about toast. But Breville’s “A Bit More” Button is nothing short of brilliant. It highlights an obvious but still unseen problem with electric toasters, devices that have been around for more than a century. And then it solves that problem in an elegant way that is also delightful to use. It’s just the kind of solution that designers desperately hope to replicate, and users hope to discover in ordinary products. But agreeing on a method for accomplishing such achievements is harder.

The “A Bit More” Button was conceived by the industrial designer Keith Hensel, who worked for Sunbeam and then as Breville’s principal designer until his unexpected death in 2013, at the age of 47. His specialty was household products, like toasters, kettles, and blenders.

Breville’s head designer, Richard Hoare, tells me that Hensel, with whom he worked closely, fell upon the idea by “focusing on user empathy.” Hensel had been pondering the problem people have with toasters. “Your bread comes up too light, so you put it back down, then get distracted and forget, and it goes through a full cycle and burns,” Hoare relates. “Keith thought, why can’t the consumer have more control? Why can’t they have ‘A Bit More?’”

According to Hoare, the design team called the button by that name from the start. Some people within Breville thought it was too colloquial, and other options were considered. “Extra Darkness” was one, and “10% Extra” another. “These were confusing and clunky,” says Hoare. “In the end ‘A Bit More’ was the clearest.” Breville, which holds several patents in motorized toaster basket tech, started selling toasters with the feature in 2008.

When it came to persuading Breville to adopt and manufacture the idea, Hoare admits that it took some time for people to see the significance. I imagined that manufacturing cost and complexity might have been a factor, but Hoare waves that off. Instead, he tells me that describing features in a way ordinary users might, rather than by means of brand-speak, had sparked debate between design and marketing. The design team insisted that the colloquial version would resonate with users. “We have had so many say, ‘I love that it’s actually called A Bit More,’” says Hoare. “‘It was so cool when I saw it printed there next to the button.’”