A Multi-Sensorial Food Kiosk

Aiming to provide a more informative, universal food selection process, I have built a kiosk that uses all five human senses and experimented with the public.

Later developed into “A Multi-Sensorial Kiosk Interface to Familiarize the Public to Try New Healthy Foods”

My Role: Individual Research
Problem definition, Multi-sensorial design, Kiosk implementation, Field experiment, Quantitative and qualitative analysis

Location
Hamyang Expo, Korea

Time
3 months prototype + experiment + 1 month documentation

Deliverables
Sensory Workshop, Arduino-operated touchscreen kiosk, Publication

Table of Contents

Problem Definition

01

Study Design

02

Study Procedure

Experiment Data Analysis

04

03

How Do We Normally Choose Food?

  • We Only Choose What We Already Like 🍉

    We are only provided with menu picture and name at a shop or a restaurant. I tried to build a food kiosk that disseminates universal flavor information with a multisensory design.

  • Heavy Reliance on Visual and Audio Elements 🔉

    Current media is dominated by audio-visual representation. Is there any way we can use more senses in daily life?

  • Unfamiliar And Healthy Foods Are Neglected 🫑

    Lots of costly programs and ways exist to have people try healthy foods—any way this is more practical?

Sensory Workshop

I have chosen an unfamiliar food item that is also healthy and antioxidant, a turmeric latte, designed a novel sensory workshop to extract necessary design requirements, and observed unfamiliar food flavor perceptions.

Multisensory Prototyping

Ingredient Exposure was devised as the user touches each presented ingredient. For audio stimulation, it was transmitted through embedded speakers, tactile through molding texture, and olfactory diffused through Arduino humidifier module.

Sensory Design Requirements

Two design majors and two food and nutrition majors who have no food allergies to the item and its ingredients—turmeric, cinnamon, honey, ginger, and milk—were recruited for the workshop. They were engaged in one session each, two people at a time, and spent around 45 to 60 minutes completing the worksheet.

Research Questions:

  • How Can We Educate and Familiarize Foods to The Public Effectively?

  • How Can We Test the Theory of Sensory Exposure Using Computation?

  • How Can We Design a Multisensory Kiosk?

Sensory Workshop

  • Vision
    Color, shape, typography, imagery

  • Sound
    Food sound, origin sound, associative music

  • Smell
    General smell, origin smell, imagery

  • Touch
    Temperature, texture, shape-feel

  • Taste
    General taste, pleasure, imagery

Interface Design

Prototyping

  • Visual

    Using Framer for the kiosk visual and on-screen interactions, I designed food selection to select the menu and start the individual ingredient exploration.

  • Audio

    With the extracted auditory modalities, I designed a sound file with the associated music, food sound, and the sound of its origin to play upon selection.

  • Olfactory

    To implement olfactory modalities, fragrance oils from Nature In Flavor Co., Ltd. were utilized to match each ingredient’s smell attributes, which were then diffused by planting an Arduino humidifier module.

  • Tactile

    Tactile stimulations were formulated through modeling clays, resin, and appropriate ornamental components, each fixed with a tact switch attached to the pertinent ingredient.

Control VS Audio-visual VS Multi-sensorial

One-Way ANOVA revealed significantly increased willingness to try and food familiarity. Paired t-tests showed significant differences in pre-food familiarity level and post-food familiarity levels.

More results and detailed insights can be found in the manuscript here.