FoodUX

Lucia Terrenghi reflects in this position paper “Sticky, Smelly, Smoky Context: Experience Design in the Kitchen” on the challenges to design, setup and evaluate a user experience in hybrid contexts, i.e. physical and digital ones, of everyday life.

It is an exploration of the introduction of digital display technology into the kitchen environment. The paper looks at the complexity of the cooking context and considers how the introduction of technology in the kitchen can affect the cooking experience.

How something looks has great influence on how it feels. “Look-and-feel” would many say simplistically. This applies to objects in our environment, like products, dishes, and others.

The study of Sun and Wang from Taiwan called “Analysis of Interrelations between Bottle Shape and Food Taste” shows how specific atom arrangements of a bottle shapes ones taste.

An interesting relationship between tangible and intangible phenomenons. Just like an application and the user experience emerging from its use.

From The Hindu: “(…) most people don’t even notice why the food they eat arrives looking, feeling or sounding the way it does.”

Architects Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter are on a mission to make people really look at what is on their plates. The young authors of the German book, Food Design, won a `Special Award of the Jury’ at the Gourmand Awards last year. This year, they will be shooting a documentary on food design, as they travel across Europe.

Their documentary film is a must see.

In its Simplicity Labs, Philips (‘Sense and simplicity’) collects successes and horror stories of people with their kitchen and during cooking.