FoodUX

Food Design: Taste, sound, vision and texture

2008-12-22T16:12:06Z

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 docu is a must see.

Improving the Usability of Recipes

2008-11-24T12:13:23Z

Recipes are the training wheels of the chef. Using them is sometimes very hard. How are the ingredients, measures, procedures and end results designed? At UserCentric, Kirsten Peters has found three ways to improve their usability.

Gordon Ramsay as a Role Model

2008-10-27T12:08:41Z

It seems that many UX designers, consultants and specialists see Gordon Ramsay as an appropriate role model of what they do. At least for Patrick Kennedy and Todd Hoff.

Why information architectects are needed in the kitchen

2008-10-03T10:51:18Z

Based upon the restaurant metaphor with a front stage (dining room) and a back stage (kitchen), the authors advice information architects and other user experience professionals to apply their thinking to the area of content management in the back stage as well.

Tim Brown on Designing The Dining XP

2008-09-19T11:45:10Z

Tim Brown, of IDEO fame, posts a thought on an unique diner experience. "We were finally taken into the chef’s office where a table had been laid for us to eat dinner. Instead of a stuffy stateroom we were deep in the private domain of the chef surrounded by his cookbooks, favorite wines, favorite music and the clutter of a large-scale culinary operation. What followed was a perfectly delivered meal where we chatted with the chef about the locally sourced food and how he cooked it as well as having great conversations amongst ourselves. Every piece of the experience felt like the chef and his staff designed it personally for us." - Sounds unforgettable.

Food Experience and Simplicity

2008-09-01T07:28:30Z

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

Visual Thinking and Cooking

2008-08-28T18:56:50Z

VizThink community member and owner of Frog Commissary, Steve Poses is taking visual thinking and cookbooks to the next level. He has just launched the in development version of the companion website for his new book. (...) I can’t wait to see the results of these collaborations when the book and website launches in the spring. My kitchen is already warming up testing recipes! - sez the VizThink blog. - Link

TCHO: Making Chocolate An Experience

2008-08-13T12:29:56Z

How do you make a chocolate company? Be obsessed. Be very, very obsessed. TCHO is a new kind of chocolate company for a new generation of chocolate enthusiasts. TCHO is where technology meets chocolate; where Silicon Valley start-up meets San Francisco food culture.

Web Trend Map 2008

2008-07-01T12:22:08Z

"(...) the brand quality layer 'Brand Experience' illustrates our perception of user experience and brand management of the main stations. We studied the usability, user value, and interface (simplicity, character, and feedback), and rated each site on a scale of eating at various types of Japanese restaurants. (...) We chose restaurants as the metaphor for brand experience because, from an interactive branding point of view, a visit to a website is like a visit to a restaurant in terms of service, feedback, content, pleasure, character, and memorability. And also because Tokyo has the highest density of good restaurants in the world." - courtesy of ruurdpriester

John Maeda in the Kitchen

2008-06-25T12:19:54Z

"The idea of thoughtful reduction is an important one in the creation process, whether the end result is a new recipe or user interface: how do you make things simpler without removing what's necessary?" says Lisa Agustin in Information Design Watch

Chocolate and User Experience

2008-06-11T12:03:22Z

Podcast from Jeff Parks at Boxes and Arrows - Michael Recchiuti talks about the experience of making chocolate and how different flavors inspire new creations for the business and his customers. Looking at different professions outside of the web world in which most UX practitioners work can inspire innovation and creativity.

Taste as Experience Design

2008-06-06T14:57:31Z

Flavor tripping in which some fruits alters the body's snse of taste seems a pure example of experience design, according to Design for Service.

Synthesis of elBulli Cuisine

2008-05-19T13:31:43Z

Three quotes from the synthesis:

(1) Cooking is a language through which all the following properties may be expressed: harmony, creativity, happiness, beauty, poetry, complexity, magic, humour, provocation and culture.

(2) The information given off by a dish is enjoyed through the senses; it is also enjoyed and interpreted by reflection.

(3) Knowledge and/or collaboration with experts from different fields (gastronomic culture, history, industrial design, etc.,) is essential for progress in cooking. In particular collaboration with the food industry and the scientific world has brought about fundamental advances. Sharing this knowledge among cooking professionals has contributed to this evolution.

Ruth's UX Nightmares

2008-05-06T14:13:47Z

Gordon Ramsey: A guerilla UX consultant?

| View | Upload your own

Celebrating technology: New directions for food research in HCI

2008-05-05T08:14:49Z

From CHI '08: "Food is a central part of our lives. Fundamentally, we need food to survive. Socially, food is something that brings people together-individuals interact through and around it. Culturally, food practices reflect our ethnicities and nationalities. Given the importance of food in our daily lives, it is important to understand what role technology currently plays and the roles it can be imagined to play in the future. In this paper we describe the existing and potential design space for HCI in the area of human-food interaction. We present ideas for future work on designing technologies in the area of human-food interaction that celebrate the positive interactions that people have with food as they eat and prepare foods in their everyday lives." - Download available.