Conference Agenda

This paper examines the design of a digital platform supporting sustainable food transformation across six European regional Hubs. Through multi-phase participatory evaluation involving contextual inquiry across culturally diverse contexts, responsive redesign, and formal usability testing, we identify a fundamental tension between technical standardization and cultural adaptation. While formal metrics demonstrated strong usability and aesthetic appeal of our platform design, Hub-based evaluation revealed that participants' requests for regional adaptation such as representing traditional production methods, biodiversity, and place-specific sustainability logics challenged fundamental platform assumptions about capturing food knowledge in standardized structures. We articulate emergent design principles including minimizing barriers while maintaining community identity, prioritizing integration over substitution, and facilitating knowledge circulation rather than data collection. Our findings suggest that meaningful transformation requires reconceptualizing platforms as distributed infrastructures that enable local adaptation while maintaining cross-regional knowledge exchange.

In recent decades, Peruvian gastronomy has experienced a higher exposure and production of culinary creations manifesting practices of transcultural mixture entangling diverse cultural influences. Nevertheless, there still remains a need for studies that discuss such cultural amalgamations, which could also inform strategies for transculturalization in other culturally sensitive practices like design. This paper analyses multiple variations of well-known Peruvian dishes to understand the historical and contemporary processes of cultural mixture that have fostered the current landscape. For this, a conceptual framework that draws from Latin American Transcultural Design Studies and Gastronomic Theory is proposed to enable transdisciplinary learnings entangling both fields, emphasizing their cultural influences and significance. To finally explore how these insights can be applied to develop strategies that enhance cultural richness, and reflect on the potential of transculturalization in both gastronomy and design for fostering pluriversal approaches that celebrate, honor and relate diverse cultural narratives.

This study addresses the dietary challenges faced by Chinese international students by developing Cooking Rush, a serious card-based board game. Using a Research through Design paradigm and Social Practice Theory, the project integrates Western nutrition with Traditional Chinese Medicine energetics. The game translates cultural beliefs into a quantified Balance of Thermal Intake (BTI) mechanism. Evaluation results from 14 participants show improved confidence in resource management and internalised dietary knowledge. Furthermore, the intervention shifts the perception of cooking from a burden to a practice of self-care. This research provides a scalable framework for cross-cultural health interventions by aligning local food logics with modern nutritional standards.

Food waste is a global sustainability concern, yet its connection to cross-cultural adaptation remains underexplored. For international students, adapting to unfamiliar food environments involves cycles of trial, error and waste. Among Chinese students in the UK (one of the largest international student populations), cultural differences and short stays intensify these processes, resulting in distinct forms of waste. This study explores how food adaptation relates to waste among first-time Chinese students in the UK, attempting to reveal areas for design interventions. Seventeen students completed seven-day cultural probes, combining daily tasks with self-reflection on food practices. The analysis revealed various types of food waste and their triggers, including time-convenience pressures, emotional disengagement from unfamiliar tastes, and cultural misalignment within local food systems. These experiences foster adaptive learning and sustainability awareness through repeated experiences of waste and adaptation. Finally, opportunities for design interventions supporting sustainable adaptation and waste reduction are discussed.

This paper discusses the Design for Peace Ecosystem: Urban Conflict and Food Justice course as a situated experiment in transformative design education. Conducted in Rio de Janeiro, the course combined participatory mapping, desk research, and fieldwork to explore how design can reveal and reframe tensions and hidden structural injustices within urban Food Systems. Students first developed urban food conflict maps to visualise inequalities in access, labour, and cultural recognition. Through desk research, they identified local “food care” initiatives that address food conflicts and promote the right to an adequate food culture. Using ethnographic diaries and ethnography techniques, they engaged with community projects to observe everyday practices of resistance, ecology, and cooperation. The final design projects reinterpreted these insights into relational design interventions that promote food justice. The paper reflects on how conflict mapping and field research can serve as design-led inquiry, fostering critical awareness and transformative engagement within urban foodscapes.

As global food systems face growing sustainability challenges, edible insects are emerging as a viable alternative protein source. This study explores how transparent window size and food processing level in packaging affect Taiwanese consumers’ purchase intentions toward insect-based foods. A 2 (window size: small vs. large) by 3 (processing level: unprocessed, semi-processed, fully processed) experiment with 359 participants, categorized by attitudes into acceptance and rejection groups, revealed that processing level significantly influenced purchase intention. Fully processed products received the highest acceptance across both groups. Window size had a minor effect, slightly increasing purchase intention among the rejection group when smaller windows were used. Positive attitudes, prior experience, and male gender in the rejection group were also associated with higher purchase intentions. Even when controlling for attitude and experience, processing level remained a significant predictor. These findings suggest that reducing visual exposure to insects and culturally tailoring packaging may enhance consumer acceptance.