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Panelists include Patanjali S. Venkatacharya (Oracle Corp., USA), Ronald M. Baecker (University of Toronto, Canada), Daniel Schwartz (Oracle USA Inc., USA), Chef Jody Adams (Rialto Restaurant, USA) and Chef Jason Santos (Gargoyles Restaurant, USA).
"This panel will bring together a group of user experience experts, with a group often overlooked in the art and science of user experience and food designers. The panelists will include: an award-winning Michelin-starred Chef, a culinary school instructor, a user experience practitioner, and a world-renowned HCI academic.
Together, the panel will compare and contrast concepts from food design and user experience including the challenges of meeting demanding end-user needs, and best practices from food design that one could potentially apply to the design of everyday things.
The main objective of the panel is to explore pertinent questions on the craft of design from two different domain perspectives, whilst evaluating some of the key overlapping concepts.
Among the issues they will examine are:
- How to ensure that designs satisfy the end customers
- The top 3 challenges in coming up with a new design (or recipe)
- How to conduct user testing in a high-stress environment
- Processes to use in developing entirely new creations
From a press release of CHI 2009 (April 4-9, 2009 - Boston, USA). - I'm speechless.
UPDATE: Panel abstract 
(ACM) - Photo impression of the panel.
I've always wondered how food visualizations effect our senses. Some people make it into their daily work to give food the best presentation. In 2007, they had their International Conference on Food Styling and Photography: A World View of Business, Techniques, and Design. Loved to have been there.
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, 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.
"(...) 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
Victor Lombardi (of NBS fame) introduces the concept of the Food Guide to guide people during their dinner through the dishes, tastes and textures. Quite a concept. "(...) the food is the focus and the restaurant provides a food-centric experience."
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)
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.
"Observation of eating and drinking behaviour and of the emotional reactions triggered by such behaviour provides unique possibilities to help the food and drink industry design products and experiences that fit special situations and evoke hedonistic experiences.", says the European Centre for the Experience Economy on the project 'Restaurant of the Future'.
Cook and interaction designer Ryan Freitas wrote an article on what he learned in a restaurant kitchen as a metaphor for Adaptive Path's design studio. (Ambidextrous Magazine special issue on Food from Stanford Institute of Design).
Just found the Y! epicenter on Food. Very general, but still useful...
