Professional Identity
My development towards Food Experience Designer originated through my passion for food, evolved during both the bachelor Food Innovation and Master of Industrial Design. Already from a young age, my interest in exploring flavours, helping in the kitchen and learning to bake showed the potential to learn more about food. While the bachelor food innovation helped me gain knowledge about food, packaging and design, my master expanded this in materiality, product design, co-creating, experience design and interaction design.
Combining food with technology during master courses led to various impressions and learnings that arose interest in collaborating with a restaurant in a higher segment, a Michelin restaurant. Earning a Michelin star requires excellence in several domains, it represents more than just prestige, it offers many benefits such as increased patronage, improved reputation, talent acquisition and media visibility, which shows its impactful industry in gastronomy and outside (École Ducasse,n.d.) . In this world, everything beyond food matters, where innovation and inspiration is required, which seems like a suitable challenge for a Food Experience Designer (Lee et al., 2024; Mak et al., 2012). A first collaboration with the 2-star Michelin restaurant De Nieuwe Winkel in Nijmegen evoked my curiosity in understanding dining experiences through the vision of chefs (De Nieuwe Winkel, n.d.). I developed a methodology of identifying worldwide restaurants based on their chefs’ stories, visions and strengths, which helped in defining suitable directions, with the focus on storytelling and Human-Food Interaction. A research-through-design process guided towards suggestions for a new presentation of a plant-based cheese platter, contributing to the dining experience while working to positively change the past negative perception of humans on this cheese alternative, including a material-driven approach.
This project developed my curiosity about experience and interaction design, where an exchange at Aalto University in Finland helped gain valuable knowledge in Service design, Emerging product design, materiality, prototyping and modelling. I developed an interest in combining user-centred with material-driven approaches that which I want to implement in reaching my ambition to design beyond food that supports reconnection between humans and their food while making an impact through experience around it.
My interest in willing to know more about the competitive gastronomical industry and to design something completely new led to a new challenge in collaborating with a traditional 2-starred Michelin restaurant, De Treeswijkhoeve in Waalre (Yilmaz, 2021, De Treeswijkhoeve, n.d.). While developing myself as a Food Experience designer, the potential of Tangible Food Design in enhancing the dining experience in high-end restaurants has been explored. While it is important to develop a strong identity, a design-driven, user-centred and material-focused approach helped to respect the restaurant’s core values while introducing innovative sensory storytelling in a new, Tangible Food Design. This project highlighted the potential of food experience design to offer innovative, contextually based contributions to gastronomy. It also suggests pathways for future collaborations between designers and chefs, where design can serve as a tool for inspiration, storytelling and differentiation in a continuously changing, competitive culinary landscape.
With the track Design, Leadership and Entrepreneurship and prioritising the expertise areas Creativity & Aesthetics and Business & Entrepreneurship, I developed a personal approach as a Food Experience designer ready to inspire the gastronomical industry in further development and inspire guests to engage more with their food. Unpacking experiences in unexpected new possibilities.
École Ducasse. (n.d.). The Michelin star rating system. https://www.ecoleducasse.com/en/blog/michelin-star-rating-system
Lee, M. Y., Lee, H., & Han, S. H. (2024). During-experience involvement and dining experience. Journal of Global Food Systems. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381196761
Mak, A. H. N., Lumbers, M., Eves, A., & Chang, R. C. Y. (2012). Factors influencing food preferences and consumption among travelers. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(3), 928–936. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2011.10.012
De Nieuwe Winkel. (n.d.). De Nieuwe Winkel. https://denieuwewinkel.com
De Treeswijkhoeve. (n.d.). Restaurant website. https://treeswijkhoeve.nl/nl
Yilmaz, C. (2021). Customer experiences and perceptions for Michelin-starred restaurants. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353607073
Zampini, M., & Spence, C. (2004). The role of color in the perception of food flavor. Food Quality and Preference, 15(7), 765–771. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2003.09.003