The food and user experience combination
Food as material – “Food Design makes possible to think in food as an edible designed product, an object that negates any reference to cooking, tradition and gastronomy. Guixé as a Food Designer builds edible products that are ergonomic, functional, communicative, interactive, visionary but radically contemporary and timeless.”
It’s like creating art with code but never execute the code and see what happens.
At the 2008 conference on ‘Design & Emotion‘ (Oct. 6-8 2008, Hongkong), one of the conference themes relates to similarities and differences between product experience design and design of food and fragrances. The theme caption reads “What emotional responses do we experience in response to foods and fragrances? Are these particular and distinct emotions, or are these the same emotions we also experience in response to product appearance? How can we describe and design for food and fragrance emotions? This theme invites papers that discuss the experiential impact of food and fragrance design.”
According to this article, an upscale New York restaurant is the first to feature ‘ubiquitous computing’, with an innovative table-top interactive menu for wine selection. (courtesy of Business Week)
A research assignment: “TV-programs about cooking are popular but could be more popular if the TV-audience could interact with the cooks about the recipe, suggest alternative ingredients, ask to show or tell more details, give background information or whatever. The main obstacle for Interactive TV seems to be that there is no adequate business model and that there is some historical separation between TV displays having only marginal processor power and PC technology. But technology doesn’t prevent Interactive TV.” – Might deliver some interesting results.
Control a computerized doll with a lollypop? Students from renowned graduate design programs converge for a Design Expo at Yahoo! to showcase innovative prototypes. Including PeterMe (of Adaptive Path fame).
Chefs are a lot like hardware hackers. Both geek out, absorbing the specs of (vegetables|technology) for the purpose of creating something that nobody else has: (innovative food|new machines). So what happens when the kitchen becomes a hack lab? Something delicious. Something geeky. – And what if being a designer for user experience is like being a chef? FH: Towards an anarchist food aesthetic.
This may seem like a ridiculous price-proposition. For € 1,50 you get half a liter of Spa Blue and for half the price you get three times that amount of water. (…) So here, ease of use is valued over content.
A collection of simple network graphs illustrating how the flavor components of 250 different food products relate to each other, as a tool to inspire the creation of original recipes. By comparing the flavor of each food product, such as strawberry, with the rest of the food and their flavors, new combinations such as ‘strawberry with peas’ can be made. The more flavors food products have in common, the shorter the distance between the food products.
“Almost every recipe begins with an instruction: cut up a chicken, slice an onion, mince some garlic, dice a few tomatoes, or maybe peel an avocado. Yet few cooks–even good ones–possess the basic knife skills to do these tasks effectively. Whether you’re a four-star chef or an at-home beginner, Knife Skills Illustrated will show you how with step-by-step drawings and instructions. Once you acquire these skills, cutting becomes a part of the pleasure of cooking. What’s more, the flavors and texture of your finished dishes will be enhanced. This comprehensive guide fills a gaping void in the literature of cooking.” – How a microtopic in cooking has impact on the endresult. Like, how bad options to choose from can break a complete experience.
Or … how to ‘improve the workforce’ by changing food habits.