Designing Multisensory Interactions: 3D printing for olfactory and gustatory experience

Food provides humans with some of the most universal and rich sensory experiences possible. For a long time technology was unable to recreate such experiences but now new innovations are changing that. Using the novel manufacturing technology of 3D printed food, I am developing 'Edible Interfaces'. My research uses a user-centered research approach to focus on food as material for interactive experience in HCI. This will lead to development of Edible Interfaces that are built on the understanding and application of the experiential affordances of food. Designing with food allows the creation of forms of experience not possible through traditional interfaces. My studies so far have explored the perceptions of 3D printed food and potentials for food to advance affective computing. This knowledge is broadening on-going work in the field of multi-sensory HCI and delivering a new perspective on how we design for experience.
Through emerging technologies, the possibility to touch, smell and taste in digital interactions is becoming a reality. This has given birth to a new field of study in Multisensory Human-Computer Interactions. The importance of this field is reflected in the recent success of commercial haptic technologies as part of a 'Material Turn' in interactions design. My work is aiming to build on this shift towards increasing tangibility, by exploring how gustatory and olfactory sensation can be exploited to offer new opportunities for interaction designers. My research explores food, and related taste sensations, to understand how they can be unified with digital media to create novel and rich experiences. Food provides the platform for some of the most semiotically rich interactions that humans have created, from the primal nature of cooking over a fire, to the ritualistic baking, performance and consumption of a birthday cake. So how can we leverage these experiences for the development of multisensory HCI?
To answer this, I take the perspective of exploring food as a material, with the intention of extending the possibilities for interaction and experience in HCI. Thanks to my partnership with Dovetailed Ltd. who have developed a 3D food printer (nufood) I will be able to use 3D food printing to directly explore the design of 'Edible Interfaces'. Unlike previous work on HCI and food I am able to conduct research in-the-wild, to truly understand how food can bring new, meaningful and useful experiences into human-computer interactions. The aim of this research is to put food and taste sensation into an interaction designer's toolbox, opening up new experiential territories to explore in interface design. My work sits in the field multisensory HCI and draws from affective computing, embodied cognition and the psychology of taste and emotion to inform this new area of enquiry.