Food Design

Relationship between human beings and food, food experience and eating behaviors, and food supply chain and post-consumption activities, respond to a complex system of situational factors and choices that individuals make, often based on patterns that are intangible or not easily predictable. Public concern about food access and food security issues is increasing, everywhere in the world. Food in its complexity must be studied and managed in a systemic and trans-disciplinary manner. Thus, understanding the role of design in the agri-food sector becomes fundamental. We need to design for more sustainable diets if we want to save the planet. But there is a positive side to this story and that is there are several professions based on creativity that can make a difference. The professions of sustainability, where humanity is synonymous with a solution, and where food goes hand in hand with innovative systems. Among these, the food designer seems to be a promising career for future prof...

The growing role of digital technology in everyday food practices offers promising yet questionable food futures. Human-food interaction technologies such as quantified diet trackers and smart kitchenware present opportunities for efficient data-driven food practices but also challenges to socioeconomic frameworks of food production and consumption. Addressing the ambiguities in contemporary food-technology innovation, we designed Food Tarot deck-a speculative design artifact provoking discussions about possible food-tech futures. The deck presents 22 speculative diet tribes such as Monsanta[n]ists, Petri Dishers, and Turing Foodies that reflect existing food-tech trends and controversies and extend them into an extreme form. At the workshop, we will use the deck as a design prop to support a critical food debate and scenarios imagining various versions of a future food-tech apocalypse.

In this article, the position that there is a good case for sustainable food tourism despite the negative impact on the climate caused by tourism and travelling practices is argued. This requires, however, that we develop well-designed sustainable food experiences. We need to redesign and rethink the very idea of the food experience with particular focus on participation, the role of the consumer, the accessibility of the food design, and the potential of local contexts, to give some universal examples. This does not mean that sustainable food tourism is or can become carbon neutral. It means that the job of the food designer is to offer climate-friendly solutions and, maybe more importantly, that sustainable food experience designers should focus on how to inspire more sustainable food consumption and anti-consumerist lifestyles beyond the context of the experience. These arguments are presented via a case study of a sustainable food experience from the Faroe Islands.

Is there a need for a set of methods within Design Thinking tailored specifically for the Food Design process? Is there a need for a branch of Design Thinking dedicated to Food Design alone? Chefs are not generally trained in Design or Design Thinking and we are only just beginning to understand how they ideate and what recourses are available to them. Given the sheer variety of eating situations, and the complexity of the factors influencing them, a design method that specifically stimulates thinking about Food Design would be very useful. I introduce TED (Themes for Eating Design, a design method developed to generate themes on the ideal eating situation, which summarises the themes it has generated in previous research, and how these themes have been transformed into a tool for the idea generation phase called Thoughts For Food. I present an initial test of TED and Thoughts for food in practice, with groups using them to design an eating experience. Initial results suggest both have promise for designing food or any other aspect of the eating experience, and that these methods can form part of a new branch of design theory that I call Food Design Thinking.

What is Food Design? And how can it help businesses? This paper first proposes a brief overview of possible definitions of Food Design, and then proposes a categorization of its sub-disciplines that highlight the different background disciplines that can be used to approach Food Design. After identifying what is Eating Design in particular, this paper gives a proposition for how Eating Design can help businesses. I argue here that Eating Design can help businesses by generating solutions that trigger people's emotions, through the consideration of all aspects of the eating situation. I present the literature that sustain the importance of designing for emotions, and then give an overview of different categorizations of the aspects that influence the eating experience concluding with the one I suggest food designers should use, the Five Aspects Meal Model. Finally I try and sustain my argument presenting three examples of eating situations designed considering all aspects influencing the eating experience, and therefore generating positive emotions in the customers.

This research focuses on design theory and Eating Design. Specifically, the aim of this research is to explore the scope for and devise a design method for the initial phase of the Eating Design process. This research devises, assesses and ultimately proposes a design method for the preparation phase to be used in a process that aims at designing for radical innovation in meaning. The proposed design method is called TED, Themes for Eating Design. This research describes a simulation of the preparation phase of an Eating Design process, where themes are created, and of the idea finding phase, where themes are then used to generate design ideas on the ideal eating situation.

Students workshop given at National University of Singapore.

Description:
The workshop will be focused on convergences of food and ICT and various ways how to use food within everyday computer mediated communication. We are going to explore the possibilities of critical food design and talk about some novel practices within the field, such as multisensoric cooking, food sonification or data visualisations created with food. After a brief introduction into the area, we will spend some time playing with OpenSauce software and see how we can cook from colours, sounds, tweets or even human stories. We will also get our hands dirty while cooking our own data, and try to build our own edible data-visualisation prototype. And of course, we are going to eat it after all!

Ad oggi, ciò che caratterizza maggiormente l’economia ed il contesto sociale in cui viviamo è la globalizzazione, che porta inevitabilmente con sé una concorrenza stringente. In questo panorama, i consumatori si trovano a poter scegliere fra una vasta gamma di prodotti, potendo optare per quelli a minor costo, spesso provenienti da paesi emergenti in cui il costo di produzione è molto basso, e quelli che hanno maggior costo, ma anche un certo valore aggiunto. Il valore aggiunto di cui si parla, e per il quale l’acquirente è disposto a pagare un
sovrapprezzo, è la qualità del prodotto. Stringendo il campo ai prodotti enogastronomici, che qui ci interessano, il consumatore richiede sempre più, grazie ad una maggiore sensibilizzazione e consapevolezza rispetto ai decenni passati, che gli alimenti rispondano a standard di igiene e sicurezza, che garantiscano la sostenibilità energetica ed ambientale,
che abbiano un equilibrato apporto nutrizionale, senza tuttavia rinunciare ai gustosi sapori tradizionali e genuini. Soddisfare queste aspettative, mantenendo un buon rapporto qualità/prezzo, assicura un vantaggio competitivo al produttore, il quale ha dunque interesse a che il suo prodotto si differenzi dagli altri per particolari qualità dovute all’origine o alle tecniche di produzione.
Bisogna riconoscere, tuttavia, che il consumatore, nella scelta dei prodotti enogastronomici, non è guidato esclusivamente dalla qualità del prodotto, ma anche dall’aspetto dello stesso o della sua confezione, che può attrarre non solo per le sue caratteristiche estetiche, ma anche per quelle funzionali.
Questa tesi, quindi, si propone di individuare quali siano le privative applicabili al settore enogastronomico, cioè quelle in grado di tutelare sotto vari profili il prodotto alimentare e, più nello specifico, la sua provenienza geografica o imprenditoriale; il suo aspetto; la sua ideazione. Le tecniche di protezione di tali privative, dunque, verranno analizzati capitolo per capitolo, affrontando sia le tecniche di cui ci si è storicamente avvalsi e rispetto alle quali vi è un riscontro normativo precipuo (ad esempio D.O.P. e I.G.P.), sia altri istituti del diritto industriale che non sono nati per essere applicati nel campo enogastronomico, ma che tuttavia possono attagliarsi a determinate fattispecie attraverso una interpretazione che tenga conto della ratio delle norme e degli interessi che si intende tutelare (ad esempio il diritto d’autore per la protezione delle ricette culinarie).
Tali tecniche di tutela verranno analizzate secondo una sequenza che permetta di coglierne le affinità reciproche. Si avverte, inoltre, che dei singoli istituti verrà trattato l’aspetto sostanziale nella misura in cui si ritenga rilevante al presente studio, tralasciando, invece, ciò che attiene più strettamente alle aree processuale e tributaria nonché al tema della sicurezza alimentare.

This article examines one example of radical innovation and everyday design through a case study of Farm School NYC, an adult education programme in New York City that uses critical pedagogy and popular education to train adult students in urban farming, social justice advocacy and teaching skills. Drawing primarily from research conducted between 2013 and 2014 for a study on urban agriculture and social justice activism, the article illustrates how a network of urban agriculture practitioners, educators and activists created a community-based training programme that takes steps towards a broad vision of a socially just urban food system and that this represents a case of everyday design by radical innovation. It argues that understanding ways in which projects like Farm School NYC infuse radical visions of social change into their day-today educational activities is useful for those interested in supporting such transformative work through teaching, farming and gardening and design.

When we think of " food designing " , of designing food or anything around eating, what are the aspects of knowledge we should consider? What are the areas we should investigate, and the information we should include in our project? We can think of such knowledge, such areas, as being divided into four main pillars that together make the whole Food Design discipline. These four pillars are food, society, technology, and environment. These are the four areas that food designers should investigate when designing anything related to food and eating, regardless of whether they are designing a dish, an event, a food service or a whole food system: every dish, every product, every event, and every food service is part of a system, and each food system sits on these four pillars. Each food system is made of elements from these four pillars, and within any Food Design project one should design aspects (or considering aspects) from each of these four pillars.

There are two quite controversial words in this title; two big words, full of meaning and history. Minimalism and Veganism are the two concepts that when applied to Food Design can lead towards sustainable solutions. We can also argue that Minimalism and Veganism combined to create the fastest road towards Sustainable Food Design, creating a formula that for this reason is really worth exploring.

Proyecto de producción y venta de panes artesanales, de estilo sourdough, estrategia de diferenciación que marcó pauta en Venezuela, al implementar fermentos naturales en toda su producción. Apostó por la investigación y desarrollo de productos panificables, con un alto nivel de calidad, siendo una propuesta diametralmente opuesta a la panadería convencional. Este texto hace énfasis en la óptica del diseño, en el #BreadDrivenByDesign, desarrollado por Viviana Moreno @laTroconis, desde febrero del 2014 a julio del 2017.

In contemporary design research and practice, food is most often seen as a problem to be fixed. Aiming to curb food system issues such as malnutrition or unsustainability, designers have proposed various techno-solutions. Digital technologies such as diet trackers or 'smart' kitchenware present opportunities for efficient food lifestyles, but also challenges to the socio-economic stability of food systems. This thesis reflects on such ambivalences by introducing Edible Speculations — a design research approach that examines food-tech innovation through Speculative and Critical Design (SCD) events. The approach is exemplified by two case studies where general public engaged in participatory speculations about emerging food-tech issues.

Socialization, eating and play are core activities that make us human. While they are often brought together, play theory suggests that their combination has unexplored potential in the context of gastronomy. Our research also indicates that a chef’s desire to control the meal may be a key impediment to developing dining experiences in which the diner’s playful engagement impacts taste, texture and flavour combination. We investigate if combining participatory research through design and play theory might better situate chefs to diversify their approach to playful gastronomy. Using experimental design methods, we interviewed a chef, a maître d’, a professional gastronomist, two food enthusiasts and a novice, to identify overlooked opportunities to extend play in gastronomy. We then conducted a series of dinners – designed with and for experts, enthusiasts and novices – to explore these opportunities, and tested the resulting method through a workshop with student chefs and game desi...

Vegetable-based food and drink products are becoming more popular in the United States with increased awareness of health benefits as well as their positive environmental impact. Yet, there is a lack of attention in marketing these healthy vegetable food products to children, particularly in comparison to less-nutritious food products that are effectively utilizing child-oriented design in the marketplace. This article includes four exploratory studies. The first three studies are part of a co-design process involving children and chefs to create playful vegetable products that appeal to children. These studies result in a variety of playful vegetables concepts which are then evaluated in different methods by children. The preliminary results of these studies indicate that children do not prefer playful versions of vegetables significantly more than familiar versions. The final study presented in this article specifically examines the role of familiarity and colour on a child’s pref...

In the past 20 years, two new disciplines have been created and have evolved, first as two separate subjects, and now more and more interconnected: food studies and food design studies. The motive behind the recent success and popularity of education in the agri-food sector lies in the fact that everywhere in the world, the boundaries around the world of food and nutrition have widened. More attention is dedicated to communication, proximity, connections, social and cultural values, and the construction of new food systems. There is a growing need to find new ways to defeat food paradoxes (malnutrition, non-sustainable production systems and the battle against food waste, to name a few). In the past 10 years, the design method has been consolidating into the field of food. Participatory design and co-creation in food experience design became popular along with the discipline of food design. However, the interest in emerging and innovative forms of teaching models in academic and non-academic scenarios in agri-food education is increasing and becoming a challenging issue in food studies pedagogy. The learning objectives of food system education are continuously redefined with the aim of providing food experts with the necessary skills to change food systems and support more sustainable and healthier food value chains. In this article four case studies are presented in which a design approach was applied into different food system education programmes. The author of this article has personally been involved in each of the four scenarios, as a teacher and as a designer. Complex questions concerning the intersection of food system educational contexts, collaboration skills, critical knowledge production and creative approaches are considered in this article. The author presents the dimensions of critical/creative thinking in the scenarios and concludes with a discussion of the challenges and resources for food studies and design educators. The lessons learned in this article provide a starting point for discussing creativity in food system learning and education. On the basis of the analysis carried out in this article, design appears to be an interesting research method to apply to food system education, capable of creating innovative interactions between disciplines and new critical and creative mindsets for food experts. Increasing creativity and critical thinking as learning objectives in food system education will generate more sustainable food cultures and communities.

Digital food technologies such as diet trackers, food sharing apps, and 'smart' kitchenware offer promising yet debatable food futures. While proponents suggest its potential to prompt efficient food lifestyles, critics highlight the underlying technosolutionism of digital food innovation and limitations related to health safety and data privacy. This workshop addresses both present and near-future digital food controversies and seeks to extend the existing body of Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research. Through scenarios and food-tech prototyping navigated by bespoke Digital Food Cards, we will unpack issues and suggest possible design approaches. We invite proposals from researchers, designers, and other practitioners interested in working towards a complex framework for future HFI research.

In recent years, Human Food Interaction (HFI) as a field of research has gained currency within HCI with a focus on how we grow, shop, cook and eat food using digital technologies. Advances in food printing technologies add an extra dimension to these established practices. Research is needed to understand how food printing technologies may affect our practices and relationship with food. This SIG meeting is structured to give HCI researchers an overview of current food printing practices and to discuss grand challenges associated with digital food. Our aims are to develop a stronger community surrounding digital food technology and Human Food Interaction (HFI) and help to move these fields forward via timely discussion and the sharing of successes and challenges. Participants will also engage in playful activities around food and will have an opportunity to create and taste 3D printed chocolates, helping them learn and debate the opportunities that exist with digitally printed food.

Nella generale tendenza all’estetizzazione del quotidiano, anche il cibo si è trasformato in un oggetto bello prima che buono, che colpisce più per la sua forma, i suoi colori, la sua ergonomia che non per il suo gusto. Sia il food design, con il suo lavoro progettuale, che il food styling hanno come obiettivo la valorizzazione estetica del cibo che perciò sempre più si mescola con altre forme d’arte come la pittura, l’architettura, la fotografia, la musica e la moda. Questo fenomeno di elaborazione estetica del cibo non può essere ridotto ad una semplice tendenza del momento. Il food design, infatti, sta conferendo  agli artefatti alimentari un senso comunicativo e valoriale del tutto nuovo, all’interno di una società ortoressica sempre più ossessionata dal cibo.
Il presente articolo punta non solo a dare attestazione del fenomeno, ma anche ad indagare le possibilità che la sociosemiotica  ha di spiegare le pratiche alimentari contemporanee e di incidere su esse, tenendo conto che anche il design prima ancora che attività produttiva  può essere attività semiotica.

In the general trend of aestheticizing the everyday life, food become a beautiful object rather than a good stuff: it strikes for shape, color, ergonomics and creativity and not so much for its taste. Both food design, with the related planning activity, and food styling refer to a stylish work on food that more and more resemble other forms of art as painting, architecture, photography, music and fashion. This kind of design cannot be trivially reduced to a widespread trend: it is giving to the food a new communicative sense and a new meaning in an orthorexic society, obsessed by food.
This paper attempts to explain the occurrence of food design, but also to examine the possibility that sociosemiotic has to explain the contemporary alimentary experience and to influence it. In fact, design would be a semiotics' work earlier than a manufacturing work.

Student number: 2095483 ] [ Wielewaalstraat 8 ] [ 3652 LT Woerdense Verlaat ] [ ] [ First supervisor: Dr. Artemis Yagou ] [ Second reader: Hilde Bouchez ] [ June 2012 ] [ VU University Amsterdam -Faculty of Arts ] [ Master's programme in Design Cultures ] I hereby declare that this thesis is an original piece of work, written by myself alone. Any information and ideas from other sources are acknowledged fully in the text and notes. (place, date) (signature)

, ce restaurant de gastronomie française situé en haut d'une tour de luxe sur la place centrale Sühbaatar d'Ulaanbaatar, Bold, chef cuisinier, me fait visiter les cuisines, impeccables, et me présente l'équipe du midi, qui finit de nettoyer les plans de travail. Entre deux coups de feu, il me prépare un plat typique de la carte en guise de démonstration. Sous une lampe chauffante, il dresse un steak de viande de boeuf au carré, cuisson bleue, accompagné de deux meringues de purée de pomme de terre formées à l'aide d'une poche à douille et de légumes verts croquants, le tout assaisonné d'un trait de réduction de jus de viande. Voilà qui contraste, à mes yeux, avec le plat de référence hautement valorisé de la cuisine mongole : le mouton entier bouilli servi et consommé sans nul autre apparat que l'arrangement sur le dessus de sa pièce maîtresse, l'imposante queue plate et grasse de la bête. Au cours d'une discussion à bâtons rompus, il m'explique comment, en Mongolie, les cuisiniers de sa génération (16-25 ans) complètent leur formation en visionnant, chaque jour, des vidéos de préparations culinaires réalisées par de grands chefs français. Toutefois, quand il en vient à parler de la technique, des gestes, du dressage, de l'ornementation et du goût, son vocabulaire et ses formulations évoquent ceux des familles que je rencontre depuis dix-huit ans dans la steppe et dans des villages reculés de Mongolie, selon lesquelles en matière de préparation et de consommation de nourriture, il est question du « bien » (sajn), du « beau » (sajhan) et du « bon » (sajn ou sajhan) (Ruhlmann 2008, 2019). C'est un seul et même terme (ou racine) qui les désigne au niveau technique, esthétique, gustatif, de même que symbolique et moral.

Progettare senza un obiettivo concreto, al di là dei costi di produzione, dei processi, dei materiali, e cioè al di là di una strategia aziendale o quanto meno di un’intenzione auto-produttiva (programmazione economica), non è davvero progettare; è al massimo un concept, tutto da verificare. Più interessante è passare dall’idea all’azione, per realizzare risultati concreti. In questa prospettiva, ho coinvolto nel mio Laboratorio di disegno industriale (2012-2013, LM4 Architettura Palermo) quattro realtà produttive siciliane, operanti in ambiti diversi: Antica Ebanisteria (arredamento e complementi di arredo), Trattotempo (orologi da parete e oggetti per la misurazione del tempo), Ai Normanni (food design), NOA Fashion Design (complementi di abbigliamento). Con loro e affiancati da abili collaboratori (Pierfrancesco Arnone, Gabriele D’Asaro e Angela Graci), gli allievi architetti hanno progettato una serie di prodotti in vista della loro commercializzazione. Alcuni di questi sono stati realizzati (prototipi), quindi testati, venduti, gustati… e hanno già dato luogo a eventi e mostre, con interesse da parte dei mass media. Alla fine del Laboratorio, ho condotto un workshop insieme al professor Antonio Scontrino – docente di Visual Communication Technology alla Bowling Green State University (USA) e autore della postfazione di questo libro – per la progettazione dei cataloghi, del menu e di immagini tali da esaltare i prodotti con una comunicazione mirata. Tutto ciò costituisce la fase iniziale: la versione 1.0 di una strategia volta a sviluppare il design in Sicilia verso mercati sensibili alla qualità progettuale.

La démarche du design management comporte des enjeux considérables pour les industries qui innovent. Dans le domaine agroalimentaire, secteur qui compte 20 % des plus grandes marques, la place accordée au design reste pourtant marginale et l’innovation est le plus souvent entre les mains des services Marketing et Recherche et Développement (R&D). Cet article montre que le design management  constitue une voie prometteuse lorsque la pression à innover est forte malgré un marché saturé. Il fournit des pistes de réflexion aux fabricants pour intégrer le design au processus de production, à condition de bien définir la stratégie et d’adapter l’organisation et son contexte.

Human-Food Interaction (HFI) scholarship has discussed the possible roles of technology in contemporary food systems and proposed design solutions to various food problems. While acknowledging that there are food issues to be fixed, we propose that there is a room for more experimental and playful HFI work beyond pragmatic problem-solving. We introduce a design research project Parlour of Food Futures that speculates on emerging food-tech practices through the 15th-century game of Tarot. Based on three live Parlour enactments, we discuss what contributions and challenges speculative design methods afford to HFI.

This study describes the trends of the emerging discipline Food Design in an attempt to analyse food projects that emphasize today’s design approach to design with or for food. The study analyses food projects designed in the last few years. The selected food projects are part of the projects submitted to Food Design®, a Food Design competition organized by studio OneOff (at its 6th edition in 2010). The projects submitted to Food Design® are the representation of young designers and professionals’ creativity in this discipline.
Semiotic analysis has been conducted on the representation boards of 24 projects that have been submitted to the 4th, 5th and 6th edition of the competition. The results of the semiotic analysis of each board have been summarized in a table under the categories target, materials, use, scenario and meaning. These data have then been reanalyzed in order to create a sub-categorization emerging from the table’s content. The sub-categories have been inserted into a wheel that has been called the Food Design wheel.

Food is an attractive communication tool, which can draw public attention to various social issues. In our project we try to explore such an issue over taste interactions and empathy inscribed in food. We have designed 'StreetSauce', an interactive service with edible interface that conveys public engagement in the problem of female homelessness. Within this paper, we present preliminary results of our research related to the StreetSauce project. The data sampled so far come from interviews, participant observation at design probes, and online questionnaire. We aim to examine the applicability of food and human-computer interaction (HCI) convergence for the support of social engagement.

In this short paper, I would like to present the main concepts explained in the MOOC module ‘’A job for the future: the ‘food designer’ and the ‘innovation bróker in agriculture’’’. The following is an updated transcription of the speech that was used for the MOOC lesson with further insights on the covered topics.

Quantified self-experimentation with personal diets is a popular activity among health enthusiasts, diagnosed patients, as well as "life hackers" pursuing self-optimization goals. In this paper, we reflect on self-experimentation practices in the context of amateur citizen science communities. We report findings from 11 month-long qualitative fieldwork in a community of nutrition hobbyists experimenting with a powdered food substitute "soylent". Our respondents customized the soylent powders to their personal needs, tracked their metabolic reactions to the diet, and discussed their findings with the online soylent user community. Although the data and knowledge sharing within the community positively impacted respondents' nutrition literacy, these activities created risks regarding their health safety and data privacy. We define soylent self-experimentation as a form of "extreme citizen science". Based on the limitations identified in the soylent community, we suggest a set of design recommendations for extreme citizen science projects.

For creative expression using the language of
nourishment, it is necessary to start from our strong
cultural roots and the customs associated with food. If
these customs are presented artistically, they can become
performances and experiences that expand towards
natural, extraordinary horizons.

The HotKarot & OpenSauce project explores the possibilities of speculative food design in encouraging social inclusion and interaction among citizens of different socioeconomic backgrounds. The project employs the associative power of taste embodied in edible storytelling prototypes that consist of a carrot hot dog served with 'narrative' sauces created in the online OpenSauce cookbook. The cookbook enables users to input various text narratives and, using the network text analysis technique, convert them into personalized sauce recipes to be served in a mobile street food bistro. As part of a collaboration with the Homelike NGO providing social support to homeless women, we designed a series of "StreetSauces" made of the life stories of nine Homelike's clients. Here we report findings from an ongoing series of design probes conducted at the StreetSauce bistro, with an aim to identify the challenges and opportunities of edible speculations used in the design-oriented research.