In recent years, more designers have been engaging in transitions, for which design expertise is used to develop visions of long-term desirable futures. However, little is known about how design expertise is positioned in transition visioning processes. In this case study, we follow a design agency in envisioning a future food system for a consortium working on the food transition. Based on our findings, we unpack several tensions that emerge between the transition context and design expertise. Such as the tension for designers to explore alternative futures that challenge the current system yet support stakeholders in seeing their place in the future. We conclude by reflecting on avenues for methodological development to optimally position design expertise for visioning in transitions.
To qualify as food design, technological details must be placed in perspective of the all-encompassing challenge of designing a successful, tasty food product that contributes to a desirable society. Articles describing food product development typically focus on technological issues, while they should provide a broader, multidisciplinary perspective to inform food design. Furthermore, food design articles also consider the creative and developmental processes followed to innovate. Including a description of the future consumption context can complete the discourse.
People waste a lot of food, especially at the consumption stage in consumer households. Despite the urgency of this topic, little is known about how consumers use visual inspection to decide to throw away fruits and vegetables at different stages of ripening and spoilage. We presented 365 US consumers with images of a banana, mango, cucumber, and avocado in 5 stages of decay in an online study and we determined how signs of decay affected participants’ consumption, preparation and disposal behaviors. As expected, product attractiveness, freshness, healthiness, and nutritiousness decreased, while the degree of decay, overripeness, and disgust increased over time. The number of people willing to consume the product was linearly related to the perceived proportion of the product affected by decay, while the number of people wanting to cut off bad parts was highest when about 40% of the product was judged to be affected. As time went on, the banana was cooked and mashed more often, while the cucumber was peeled more often. As growing, ripening and decay differ considerably between agricultural products, it is important to take sensory and preparation differences into account when investigating consumption and disposal behaviors.
Disgust is a strong emotion influencing human behaviour in many domains, including food choices. For example, many western consumers are hesitant about eating insects. This is understandable as insects have been connected with the emotion of disgust. We conducted two design workshops to gain a better understanding of factors that can give rise to the emotion of disgust in the context of grasshoppers and explore alternative food design solutions. Based on the insights, we created four design fiction examples to illustrate how disgust can be an integral part of grasshopper consumption. We argue that changing the attitude of Europeans towards novel food items like grasshoppers requires exploring design strategies that neither solely focus on the sustainability benefits of insect consumption nor take disgust to be something that must be circumvented
Designers hope that their innovations will be adopted by the people they are designed for. How well their designs align with consumers’ cultural contexts is a key determinant of whether they are accepted or rejected. This is especially important for food solutions, as eating habits are deeply rooted in local cultures. However, academic disciplines from the humanities and social sciences that study food culture not always provide the knowledge, methods and tools that food designers need. Whereas these disciplines mainly investigate the past and present, designers look to the future to create new possibilities. In addition, designers often look for concrete, physical touchpoints they can use, whereas the other disciplines may look for sources of underlying meaning and, thereby, may generate conclusions that remain rather generic or abstract. In this article we discuss how culture and cultural context can be understood and utilized by designers. We describe models and tools designers can use to gain sociocultural insights, and we describe different strategies designers can employ to build on such knowledge in their design process. We conclude with suggestions to close the gaps between designers, design researchers and the other disciplines that study food culture.
For health and environmental reasons, humanity should reduce the consumption of animal-based products, whereas vegetable consumption should be increased. We created stimuli (drawings with texts) that may be able to increase or decrease the purchasing of mushrooms, cheese, and meat. During the design process, we identified four aspect categories (sensory, health, environment, moral) and we generated positive and negative examples for all products. In Study 1 we determined the familiarity, credibility and relevance of each aspect and measured emotional responses to them. In Study 2, we investigated to what extent four aspects combined in an infographic on a poster lessened or strengthened the emotional responses, purchase intention, and tendency to adapt behavior for the three products. Regression analyses showed that the emotional responses to the posters were well predicted by the responses to the product aspects. Purchase intentions were mainly affected by negative affect, while positive and negative affect seemed equally important for people’s intention to change behavior.
In recent years, more designers have been engaging in transitions for which design activity is used to develop innovations that steer change. However, little is known about how designers develop innovations to foster change along a desired transition path. In this short paper, we explore how designers can develop joint innovations that steer a transition of the Dutch food system to embrace flexibility and cater to enough. We present a new practice called Adaptable Consumption, which aims to realign food safety, quality, and sustainability. Based on our preliminary findings, we discuss how our process inspires reflections on the transition and reveals key indicators for collaborative change. We conclude by reflecting on areas of the process that need further exploration in order to stage the process and design expertise effectively in this highly complex transition context.
The movement of food may suggest the food is very fresh but may also indicate the source of food is still alive. In this study, we explore the responses that different kinds of food movements can evoke among consumers. In an online study, we presented participants with 14 videos in which a food product changed shape or moved, before or while being eaten. They rated their emotional responses to the food (disgust, fear, fascination), their tendency to empathize with the beings in the video, characteristics of the movements, and how they experienced the food. Most foods that moved in the videos elicited more disgust than expected for those food items. Many product aspects that elicited disgust also evoked empathy, while fascination showed opposite patterns. Products elicited empathy and disgust when they seemed to be alive and potentially harmful, and their movements were twitchy. Participants empathized mainly with larger animals, while disgust was particularly high for smaller animals like maggots in cheese and crawling coconut worms. People became fascinated with foods they found safe, nutritious, and that looked attractive, while the food movements were subtle and looked natural with the food. These results showed that the movements of foods that appeared to be alive were different from what was considered natural for the food, and so they also evoked different emotional responses.
The market growth of plant-based alternatives to animal food products pushes agencies around the world to discuss specific regulations regarding their communication, terminology, and packaging design. We created and tested 18 packages of plant-based milk and plant-based chicken meat varying the “animalness” of terminology, container, image, and claim. An online survey was answered by a sample of 600 US participants. The image (cow or soybean on milk; chicken or wheat on meat) had a significant effect on the expected origin (animal or vegetable) of the products, but terminology (“milk”, “mylk” or “drink”; “chicken”, “strips” or “seitan”), container (plastic jug or carton box; plastic tray or glass jar), sensory claim (“creamy” or “smooth” on milk) and nutritional claim (“no cholesterol” or “low sodium” on chicken) did not. We found significant effects of the type of container on the willingness to try the meat and of terminology on the willingness to try the milk. Finally, terminology and image significantly affected consumers’ expectations for the sensory characteristics of the two products. These findings can help agencies regulate terminology and packaging aspects of plant-based substitutes, as well as inform industries, scientists, and designers.
To increase practical relevance, scientific research on food design is slowly shifting towards studying real-life food situations, letting go of experimental control to allow creative freedom and studying design considerations during the creative process. On the other hand, some chefs and food designers have started to develop collaborative activities with academic professionals and involve researchers in their work who can conduct sensory tests of their cooking efforts. Some design researchers try to obtain general principles of interest from the creation and evaluation of food prototypes, for example in digital gastronomy, while using playfulness to increase dining engagement, or to promote healthier and more sustainable food practices. This mutual cross-fertilization can enrich research activities and refine design and culinary practices.
Eating meat can have detrimental effects on the environment, animal welfare, and a person’s health. However, consumers are often reluctant to reduce their meat consumption and public information-based awareness campaigns show little effect. As an alternative, some vegan activists and pressure groups employ emotion-based campaigns using meat-shaming techniques in the hope to change people’s meat consumption behavior. By publicly and often drastically criticizing consumers, they try to make them experience negative emotions and ultimately change their behavior. In three experimental studies, we explore whether a confrontational approach of putting meat-shaming messages on products is likely to affect consumer behavior. Specifically, we find that meat-shaming messages trigger shame but also other negative emotions that translate into reduced purchase intentions. The content of the message largely determines the different emotions that are evoked. The messages can activate both restore and protect motivations, either stimulating or hindering behavioral change. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter whether the meat-shaming message stems from a governmental organization, activist group, or private person and whether it is framed with a personal or informational appeal. If the source looks credible, the message influences consumer experience and behavioral intentions.
Obesity has been pointed out as one of the main current health risks leading to calls for a so-called “war on obesity”. As we show in this paper, activities that attempt to counter obesity by persuading people to adjust a specific behavior often employ a pedagogy of regret and disgust. Nowadays, however, public healthcare campaigns that aim to tackle obesity have often replaced or augmented the explicit negative depictions of obesity and/or excessive food intake with the positive promotion of healthy food items. In this paper, we draw on a phenomenological perspective on disgust to highlight that food-related disgust is connected to the character and behavior of a perceived individual even in the context of promoting healthy food items. We argue that the focus on “making the healthy food choice the easy choice” might be an important step towards the de-stigmatization of people that are affected by obesity. However, so we suggest, this focus threatens to bring back an image of individuals affected by obesity as disgusting “through the backdoor”. It does so not by portraying bodies with overweight as disgusting, but instead by implying that lifestyle choices, character and habits of people that are affected by obesity are markers of a lack of control. We argue that the close relationship between disgust and the perception of self-control in the context of obesity should be taken into consideration in the context of assessing the implications of new health promotion strategies to minimize the risk of stigmatizing people.
The consumption of a solo meal is often subject to negative associations. Studies indicate that solo diners use information and communication technology (ICT) devices such as smartphones, to mitigate negative experiences such as boredom and loneliness, especially when dining in a public context. However, we know less about the motivation to use such devices and consequent meal experiences in a private context. For this exploratory qualitative study, we asked participants to fill out a cultural probe kit to capture their dining experience and use of ICT devices over a period of seven days. Once completed, the content was discussed with participants during a semi-structured interview. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis in a deductive and inductive form leading to four themes: (1) The experience of eating with others; (2) The use of electronic devices while eating; (3) The meaning of food; and (4) Relaxing features and influences. Participants indicated that eating alone can be a pleasurable experience that people enjoy and perceive as relaxing. ICT devices were named to play an essential part in the dining experience. The entertainment that devices provide can mitigate feelings of loneliness and uncomfortable silence when eating by oneself. We reflect on the findings and point out potential design avenues for future studies.
Disgust is commonly understood as an emotion of aversion. However, people seem to eat certain food items not despite containing disgust eliciting features but because of them. In this paper, we introduce the term aesthetic disgust to capture this phenomenon. We outline in our manuscript how designers use different techniques to stage the food experience and facilitate aesthetic disgust, which can be understood as more than just a pleasurable experience. We outline twelve staging techniques used in the context of food design to facilitate a distancing or embracing effect regarding the disgust eliciting features. Three food examples illustrate how these different techniques can be combined and applied in design practice.
While over the last century food systems have become more controlled, standardized and globalized, the plants and animals that form the basis of our food production still show seasonal fluctuation. The growth and reproductive cycles of these organisms follow seasonal weather patterns, including changes in rainfall, light exposure and temperature. Food designers should consider such aspects of seasonality, as they affect the availability and quality of the ingredients that they work with. Moreover, seasonality brings unique possibilities and challenges that can inspire new and interesting solutions for culinary applications, food propositions and social events. In addition, seasonality can be a goal to aspire to, because it can provide benefits in the domains of sustainability, health and well-being. For these reasons, we propose that, instead of following the current trend of deseasonalization, food designers can contribute to reconcile our food systems with the seasons. This will provide an excellent opportunity for enabling more sustainable, meaningful and healthy rhythms of growing, processing, preparing and consuming food.
In this editorial, the great diversity of disciplines that come together and the pursuit of improvement are identified as two important characteristics of the field of food design.
Although governments have implemented regulations to inform consumers on important product properties and protect consumers from deceptive information, empirical research on how consumers perceive, interpret and experience food packages have shown frequently that consumers may be misled by how information is presented and packages are designed. While communication in some domains is strictly regulated (health), claims in other domains are largely free (nature) and do not require substantiation. Subtleties in wording, image use and image style may affect the impressions consumers form. To support consumer decision making, legislators should not only provide rules and regulations that are formally correct, but also consider the effects a message and the way it is communicated (e.g., content, typeface, size, use of images, stylistic features) may have on buyers. While it may be unclear how best to support desirable behaviours, companies that take social responsibility can build on our work to develop their strategy.
Commercial food packages may contain multiple messages. Packaging designers try to integrate all messages into a coherent design. Designers may use text, images or stylistic features, but these mediums may differ in their suitability to communicate specific product benefits. To evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of these three mediums, we not only obtained consumer evaluations of packaging designs, but we also monitored the designer’s experience during the design process.
For three products (orange juice, muesli bar, plain yogurt) we created three consistent packaging designs communicating a single benefit through all three mediums, which was either a [1] health, [2] environmental, or [3] production, sensory or social claim. Subsequently, we developed inconsistent packages communicating three different messages through the three mediums. In an online survey, each of the 18 package variants was evaluated by 59–92 participants.
Dummy regression analysis suggested that verbal claims had positive effects in communicating healthiness and environmental friendliness but elicited a negative tendency for sensory properties. The images we used indicated a positive effect for communicating worker conditions, but a negative effect for healthiness. Our stylistic elements suggested a positive effect for sensory appeal, but tended to have negative effects for environmental aspects. As regards designer dilemmas, we noticed that some images (e.g., in the medical domain) required specific graphic styles to make them acceptable for commercial use. Our findings suggest that consumers can handle multiple packaging messages, but finding an optimal configuration remains a design challenge.
An increasing number of people tend to eat alone due to social changes and an altered attitude towards cooking and eating practices. Anecdotal reports indicate that solo diners tend to use information and communication technology devices, for example, the smartphone, as part of the eating experience. While lab studies suggest that the devices contribute to an increased high-calorie food intake and decreased feeling of satiety, these studies disregard the everyday experience and motivation of solo diners. We conducted an exploratory study to investigate how solo diners use digital devices as part of their daily eating experience. Semi-structured interviews with solo diners (N = 12) were analyzed using thematic analysis in an inductive approach leading to six themes. The themes focus on (1) the perception of a meal; (2) the experience of a solo diner; (3) the purpose of using an information and communication technology device; (4) the perceived influence of the devices; (5) factors decreasing and increasing the use; (6) and the potential to promote healthier food consumption. Our results indicate that the use of digital devices while eating alone can lead to distraction, being unaware of the food texture and the amount that is eaten. The devices can also induce a positive influence by providing entertainment and mitigating negative emotions like loneliness and boredom. The devices have the potential to contribute to healthy eating practices by providing education and by influencing the speed of eating through elements of sound. Although the use of devices might negatively affect eating behavior, their ubiquitous presence also offers the opportunity to reach specific, vulnerable populations.
Disgust is a strong emotion of aversion. In the context of food, it is often referred to as a guardian of the mouth, preventing close contact with pathogens and the accidental consumption of poisons. However, disgust can also create a certain level of attraction and be part of positive experiences, even in the context of food. In this article, we discuss different ways of using disgust to influence eating behaviour and contribute to healthier food consumption. We outline ten different bridging concepts accompanied by various design exemplars on how to use disgust in the context of critical food design. In addition, we present four different lenses that can help to refine the design concepts.
Food experiences extend beyond the eating of food. They may involve fantasizing about food, perceiving the venue where you buy or consume it, seeing or smelling the food from a distance, touching its package or container, the tools you use to prepare and cook, the cutlery you use to eat, the way you dispose of the leftovers, and so on. In each of these stages, multiple sensory impressions conveyed by the senses of touch, audition, smell, vision, and taste contribute to the overall experience. This chapter presents a structured design approach in which all sensory modalities are aligned to contribute to the same product expression over multiple stages of consumer interactions. The approach is illustrated through a project aiming to enhance the experience of homemade cooking while using a kitchen appliance.
This systematic overview tries to link scientific knowledge on human perception and appreciation mechanisms to culinary practices. We discuss the roles of the human senses during eating, starting out with basic mechanisms of taste and smell perception, up to principles of aesthetics. These insights are related to how foods are experienced, how ingredients are combined, the use of flavor bases in cuisines, the creation of a full course meal, the choice of a beverage with a dish, and how people learn to appreciate new foods.
Food design is a relatively new discipline that requires designers to become familiar with several areas that are not currently covered in many design curricula, such as agriculture, the food industry, culinary processes and the hospitality industry. To inspire, enrich and facilitate food design processes, we developed and tested a card set reflecting the richness of the food design field. After literature review, we clustered findings into seven main categories: agriculture, industrial processing, distribution & marketing, kitchen management, eater, consumption situation, and policy & legislation. Each category is represented by five topic cards and one overview card. The card set is accompanied by instructions for six exercises. Testing the card set among individual designers and student groups showed that it was considered useful in multiple stages of the design process. In the beginning of the design process, it was used to gain overview and to inspire. Along the process, it enhanced brainstorming, facilitated discussions, and was used to create scenarios and refine ideas. In later stages, the variety of topics was helpful in evaluating whether all important design aspects had been considered.
What makes food design different from other types of industrial product design? Based on over twenty years of professional design practice and food experience research, the authors present a variety of insights – clustered in five overarching themes – that provide an invaluable view on the specifics of the food realm for practicing designers in this field. First of all, foods are based on materials that used to be alive, which makes them highly perishable. Before the widespread introduction of mass transportations systems, foods were usually produced and consumed in the same region. But food technologists continuously try to improve the ways to preserve foods and invest in packaging that protects them in order to increase shelf life and to make them more widely available, while consumers seem to demand more and more freshness. The second challenge is presented by the need to make the food system more sustainable, addressing agricultural production and its impact on biological diversity and the quality of the living environment and also focusing on the amount of waste generated in terms of food or its packaging material. Third, the food people eat is absorbed and transformed into the building blocks of their bodies. Food fulfils a basic human need, and thus, there is a challenge to provide people access to the right amount of safe and nutritious food, in order to keep them healthy. Fourth, food is a source of sensory stimulation that enriches people’s lives. This provides a new sensory spectrum to design for – including flavour and mouthfeel – and it challenges designers to trigger appetite, rather than aesthetics. The fifth challenge addresses preparation practices and the associated cultural differences. Because food stuffs can be prepared in multiple ways, many different products can be created, varying from raw to highly processed, and addressing multiple consumer needs, eating occasions and market segments. These five themes provide interesting challenges for designers that should be tackled in order to provide a healthy and sustainable future for the next generations on this planet.
Affluent societies face several challenges involving the relationships between people and their food, including the rise of welfare diseases and the huge amount of food wasted. These problems are partly due to the operation of the market economy, in which companies develop products that cater to momentary desires of individual consumers. To tackle societal problems, we need to develop different approaches in line with people’s long-term goals and providing benefits to the community, the environment, and society. To achieve enduring changes in behavior, designers can create series of interventions that address all stages people typically go through. In addition, designers, companies and users should be prepared to share the responsibility associated with the potential impact of new product introductions.
The colour of the background on which products are presented may affect their perceived attractiveness. In order to find out on which type of background various fresh food products look most attractive, we presented five different vegetables (tomato, carrot, yellow bell pepper, eggplant, mushroom) on five different backgrounds with neutral grey colours varying in degree of blackness: 5, 30, 50, 65, and 90%. Forty-six participants provided colour matches for the vegetables and evaluated them on 10 attributes.
Overall, the blackness of the backgrounds had little or no effect on the perceived colour of the vegetable. Only for carrots we found a small but significant difference, mainly between the 5% and 90% blackness backgrounds. On the darkest background, the carrot would be perceived as a bit lighter, more saturated, and more yellow rather than red, compared to the lightest background.
Differences in perceived attractiveness on the grey backgrounds varied between 0.3 and 1.0 units on a 9-point scale. Attractiveness and expensiveness ratings for most vegetables were highest on the 90% blackness background. In comparison to our previous study where we presented vegetables on hued backgrounds, differences between mean attractiveness ratings were smaller. Because mean attractiveness ratings in the current study were higher, we expect that grey backgrounds are more likely to present vegetable assortments with a variety of hues in an attractive way than hued backgrounds.
Although experiences are personal and subjective, researchers can investigate them by observing people’s expressions and behavior. This permits to deliberately design these events and see how changes in the design affect people’s experiences. By focusing on experiences rather than products, the effects that products and associated services have in human life and their contribution to the consumer’s well-being are emphasized. This chapter discusses the concept of experience and some of the tools that were developed to create particular experiences.
An overview of student design projects shows how these insights and design tools can be used to inspire innovations in the food domain, with topics varying between attempts to improve nutritional lifestyle, enriching the emotional experiences that food products evoke, and connecting people through the meals they prepare and consume. Using the approaches presented here could contribute to new ways of tackling the imminent challenges the world faces in the food domain.
Even though designers are specifically trained to create and build new products, their contribution to innovation in the food industry is relatively small. The industry seems unfamiliar with the ways in which designers operate and may be unaware of the added value they may provide. Therefore, this article identifies the potential roles that designers could fulfil within large food companies. The development of new consumer products requires knowledge of target consumers, production technology and the business environment. These three types of expertise are often concentrated in different departments. Although highly experienced product experts such as culinary chefs may be able to integrate this knowledge, involving designers may be a more fruitful strategy. First of all, designers tend to approach design challenges holistically, which broadens the scope of the project. As a consequence, designers will provide more innovative solutions, which can guide multiple project aspects simultaneously (production, packaging, marketing). Second, designers shape their own tools, which will engage the others involved. Third, designers are equipped to manage the product development process and can facilitate cooperation between the disciplinary experts. Fourth, designers can play a role in bringing together and integrating the knowledge from the different disciplines. By strengthening these roles, large food companies can deliver innovations that address actual consumer needs, provide a positive contribution to society and consolidate long-term profitability and growth.
For designers, foods represent interesting prototyping materials, which are firmly rooted in daily, cultural practices and can be enjoyed through all the senses. Their regional, seasonal and perishable character challenges designers to connect consumers with agriculture, trading and processing methods.
Designers can play a significant role in providing the world population with food that is produced in a sustainable way, is tasty and healthy and can form the centrepiece in culinary experiences. However, design students will need to acquire more knowledge specific for the food domain if they want to qualify as cooperation partners for other food professionals. In addition, because the food domain is vast and diverse, food design education could focus on various application domains, resulting in design students with different profiles.
In this article, I make a distinction between designing for a person who consumes food at home or is eating out. The first case emphasizes the food itself in the home situation, including food production, packaging, food buying, shelf life, preparation, serving, handling leftovers and waste disposal. In the second case, the consumer’s meal experience depends on the atmosphere in the restaurant, interactions with serving staff, the offerings on the menu and quality of the dish. In addition, several processes take place outside the consumer’s view, such as food preparation, storage, personnel management and business administration.
Based on these topics and comparison with adjoining educational curricula, a list of training topics is derived. For all food designers, this consists of general design capabilities, food science, cooking skills, consumer insights and sustainability issues. In addition, the ‘eating at home’ designer should gather knowledge on agricultural production, food technology and food industry business, whereas the ‘eating out’ designer will need to focus mainly on food product knowledge, culinary technology, equipment engineering, restaurant design, consumer dining behaviour and hospitality business.
The variety of fruits and vegetables in today’s supermarkets is enormous. We investigated how color may lead consumers to anticipate differences in product properties. Forty volunteers rated the expected properties for carrots with different colors presented in pictures, together with their familiarity, purchase intention, and intended preparation method on 7-point scales. We found most positive expectations for the typical and most familiar kinds of orange carrots. Lower saturation of orange was associated with lower attractiveness and freshness, whereas higher orange saturation was evaluated as more artificial. Brown spots on carrots were associated with disease and such carrots were regarded less healthy. Carrots in atypical colors were rated as less familiar, attractive and healthy than orange ones. In comparison with the orange carrots, red carrots were expected to taste sourer and spicier, purple and yellow carrots were rated less nutritious and more artificial, with purple carrots expected to taste more bitter and yellow ones more sour. White and white-green carrots rated lower on sweet, and higher on sour, bitter, and spicy. These carrots were considered less ripe and less nutritious than orange ones. These results indicate that color hue and saturation have substantial impact on consumers’ expectations about sensory and functional properties, including freshness and nutritional value. Some of these expectations may be derived from associations to other vegetables, as reflected by high ratings for spiciness (red pepper) and taste intensity (turnip, radish). However, low attractiveness ratings also suggest that consumers may be reluctant to try unfamiliar variants, at least at first glance. Although atypical colors produce culinary opportunities, commercial success may be limited until consumers integrate them in their everyday habits.
The color of the background on which products are presented may affect their perceived attractiveness. We presented five different vegetables (tomato, carrot, yellow bell pepper, cucumber, eggplant) on four different background colors (orange or blue, either light or dark). Although the backgrounds did not affect the direct color perception of the vegetables, they did affect their perceived attractiveness, with quite different backgrounds proving optimal for the various vegetables. These outcomes suggest that it is difficult to find non-neutral background colors on which a large number of vegetables can be presented in an optimal way.
Methods originally developed for the sensory evaluation of foods are increasingly being applied to other product categories, ranging from personal care products to car interiors and air conditioning units. Furthermore, because an increasing number of food products tend to be available in packages from which they can be consumed directly, the sensory properties of packages have become an integral part of consumers’ food experiences and require thorough investigation. In addition, food consumption in everyday life takes place within a physical, social, and cultural context. This asks for a reconsideration of the role of sensory analysis in the product development process. To seduce consumers in highly saturated markets, products should not only provide good quality and be appealing, but they should offer interesting and engaging experiences. Therefore, research on sensory evaluation needs to be linked to research on product aesthetics, product meaning, and product emotions. Capturing the entire consumer experience requires an integral approach, in which research approaches from various academic fields are combined and integrated. For this approach to succeed in industrial companies, many different departments will need to work together in close cooperation.
Fluid food products are always consumed from a container: a package, a cup, a bowl, and so on. The properties of this container may affect how the food is experienced. In the present study, we develop a method to study the effects of container properties on the experience of drinking beverages. Participants either evaluated empty cups made from different materials, or they evaluated the experience of drinking hot tea or a chilled softdrink from these cups. In all three conditions, the same set of attributes was used. The results suggest that for many attributes the drinking experience followed the experience of the cups. However, some deviations were also evident. Ratings on the cold-warm item increased when hot tea was consumed from some of the cups, probably related to the increase of the outside temperature of the cup. Differences between conditions for other items (e.g., robust-fragile, strong-weak), however, do not seem to be related to physical changes of the cup and may have a semantic or emotional origin.
During the various stages of user–product interactions, different sensory modalities may be important and different emotional responses may be elicited. We investigated how a dehydrated food product was experienced at different stages of product usage: choosing a product on a supermarket shelf, opening a package, cooking and eating the food. At the buying stage, vision was the most important modality, followed by taste. Smell was dominant at the cooking stage, and taste was the most important sensation while eating the food. Analysis of the emotional dynamics showed that ratings for satisfaction and pleasant surprise tended to be lowest during the buying stages. Fascination and boredom ratings tended to decrease gradually over the course of the experiment. Comments mostly reflected responses to sensory qualities, usability aspects, and the nature of the product. At the purchase stage, pre-existing attitudes and stereotypes towards the product group seemed to play a major role in affective reactions, while in the other stages when other modalities were actively involved, participants’ emotional judgements reflected mainly their direct sensory experience.
This study examines the influence of packaging design on taste impressions. Building forth on research addressing transfer effects of symbolic associations from one sense to another, in this study it was studied if, and to what extent, potency-related associations portrayed by shape curvature and color saturation of yoghurt packages transfer to subsequent taste experiences. Furthermore, the influence of participants’ sensitivity to design was taken into account. Data were collected during a field study in the entrance hall of a large supermarket. Results indicate that associations portrayed by shape curvature in particular transfer to taste experiences, but that these effects are most pronounced for participants with a sensitivity to design. In addition, the findings presented indicate that shape curvature and color saturation may impact more general product evaluations and price expectations as well.
Emotions experienced by healthy individuals in response to tasting or eating food were examined in two studies. In the first study, 42 participants reported the frequency with which 22 emotion types were experienced in everyday interactions with food products, and the conditions that elicited these emotions. In the second study, 124 participants reported the extent to which they experienced each emotion type during sample tasting tests for sweet bakery snacks, savoury snacks, and pasta meals. Although all emotions occurred from time to time in response to eating or tasting food, pleasant emotions were reported more often than unpleasant ones. Satisfaction, enjoyment, and desire were experienced most often, and sadness, anger, and jealousy least often. Participants reported a wide variety of eliciting conditions, including statements that referred directly to sensory properties and experienced consequences, and statements that referred to more indirect conditions, such as expectations and associations. Five different sources of food emotions are proposed to represent the various reported eliciting conditions: sensory attributes, experienced consequences, anticipated consequences, personal or cultural meanings, and actions of associated agents.