Description:

Palate is a speculative project exploring the relationships between personalised food, commensality (the act of eating together), and technology through interactive design. It responds to my lived experience with celiac disease alongside the rise of personalised nutrition, which reflects a broader trend of health and belief driven food avoidance. With the personalized nutrition market expected to grow from USD 8.3 Billion in 2020 to an expected USD 21.4 billion by 2028, the future Palate explores imagines a world where commensality has become increasingly fragmented.

Palate presents a speculative interface connected to wearable ‘mouth patch,’ that augments users’ sensory perception of the food, altering taste, texture, smell, appearance and sound, without physically changing the food itself. Users can share these augmented sensory experiences remotely, enabling commensality across distance and dietary barriers. By focusing on playful and multi-sensory design, Palate seeks to restore the joy of eating together while addressing the constraints of dietary restrictions and physical separation. It raises questions about intimacy and shared experience; could experiencing food through intertwined senses deepen our social bonds? How might we design technology to enhance connection instead of isolation?

The design blends familiar tactile interfaces like remotes, gamepads, and analogue mixers with a warm, retro-futuristic user interface. Vibrant colours, organic shapes, and playful interactions intentionally contrast with the cold, sterile, optimised aesthetic common in dystopian design. Drawing inspiration from food design, memories and nostalgic cues– what we hear, taste, smell and feel when we eat, Palate encourages users to slow down and enjoy meals with others. Its gamified, sensory-driven experience invites active participation, prompting reflection on contemporary eating habits and the broader implications of prioritising efficiency over connection.

Developed through a speculative framework and practice-led approach, Palate priortises critical reflection over direct problem solving. It critiques hyper-individualistic trends like the ‘quantified self’ and challenges the ideology ‘technological determinism’, opening space to question degrowth and socially driven design. Palate encourages discussion about how humans can shape technology, rather than be shaped by it. By emphasising sensory interaction and play, it treats food and commensality as cultural practices to be valued rather than optimised. Could we design technology that prioritises joy, slowness, and connection? Or could a future arise where even the act of sharing a meal becomes over engineered? Palate invites these questions, not to answer them, but to encourage further discussion.