Food, design, users: how to design food interaction modes

Food is becoming a design material: its use and consumption along with the entire related scenario have changed. Food, in particular, is no longer of interest only to cooks and pastry chefs but also to designers, of food and otherwise. The design of the new "material-food" creates new sensory worlds: as a result, the taste is analysed as a new and unexpected experience. At the same time, food handling is another crucial aspect that has acquired growing importance: what is the consumer’s behaviour like when handling the food product? In other words, what are the ways and places of interaction between “this material” and the consumer? It is clear that interaction modes with food are changing according to its “usage context” and its presentation form (extruded, expanded, sandwich, mesh, granules, etc.). These presentation forms are directly linked to food ingredients and are often mediated by the presence of a packaging, which determines the user's first interaction with the food. An example is given by a study of a chocolate bar that is illustrated in this paper. The chocolate can be eaten at home as a dessert or on a ski slope as an energising snack, but at the same time it can appear in different ways: as a multilayer when joined with cookies, as a moulded material in the case of cream chocolate or as a composite material when the chocolate bar contains nuts. Starting from the mode of interaction and consumption that should be satisfied, a classification of the possible presentation forms of a chocolate bar can be carried out. Consequently, on the basis of this classification, innovative interactions modes of the food with its packaging and the final user should be devised. As a result, according to the different interaction modes that should be achieved, the chocolate bar can become the object of the design process and therefore its design can be approached by following the design process usually adopted for a product. Moreover, on these assumptions, should the real or virtual material libraries, generally considered by designers as a useful research and knowledge tool in relation to material innovations, enlarge the field of action with the inclusion of a section dedicated to food? Should the material libraries include a cabinet as a section dedicated to food and its presentation forms? The paper aims at describing the results collected so far by this research focused on “food as a design material”.