Maybe  having an interactive crafting mini-game.  Remove the timer  but require the  user to be there and  react to changes in the  crafting of there  item.  Just a  basic example is  if it gets to hot   add  water or coolant    then let  it cool and  proceed to the next step.   Or like everquest 2  did  where you have a set of buttons  and   counters to use if  something went wrong  but the button that  has to be countered  would be  on their end and be random so you couldn't just say 1, 2 , 1, 2  ,3  . 1, 4   ect.   I know this is a MMO  example but it's of them have good crafting ideas to draw from.

Yes I could have been clearer :D - I agree that it's nonsensical to click each ingredient individually. But as I mentioned "if" eventually you get tho choose multiple features on the weapon then this could perhaps be jusitified? - Ie choosing what stats it has....

But for the current system it's indeed quite clunky. Let's see what the devs think!

Something to keep in mind is that this is supposed to be a bare bones version of what crafting will look like in the finished product. Now, I'm not saying that this *will* happen or is in the plan at all, but one reason the system might be designed to require clicking on the individual components is in the event that different qualities of the same parts come into play. Say you throw 3 rare versions of an ingredient and a common version to end up with an item better than a basic version but not quite as good as it could be. This is a single example of why it might be intentionally designed like this. There might be other reasons or it might just be the way some designer/programmer happened to put it in there for now until the feature gets more polished. As it stands now I tend to agree that clicking each ingredient is slightly less time efficient than a system that simply subtracted the parts from your total, but personally it's not a huge deal to me and frankly I probably wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't mentioned it. 

I'm just happy I don't have to waste storage space holding parts.

At present we are looking at

1 - Click on techpriest

2 - Click on "craft"

3 - Click on Recipe

4 - Click on "craft"

From what I can infer the only thing that could change is the removal of the priest and having different stations for crafting and salvaging, removing 1 click. I don't think the others would / could be changed in any way. 

I do agree that the actual craft button it'self is a little hard to spot, and the layout of the ingredients seems unnecessarily "odd" - Not quite sure why all the different patterns and shapes are required - Perhaps when the system is expanded they will server a purpose. 

Things i'd like to see are 

1 - Option to select / filter what you "can" craft due to materials. (presuming the list of materials gets bigger) 

2 - Filters which are weapon / equipment / melee etc to make it easier to shop around and compare.

3 - Having to click materials independently seems a strange and pointless step as there is no choice involved - Perhaps this will serve a purpose later on but for now it just feels like you have to play a game of "snap" in order to make something. Given the icons also look similar it's a little awkward looking back and forth to see what materials you have.. If there are any choices to be made I think they could be better layed out.