ABSTRACT
This paper describes how the online Food Design Dates initiative, which was planned as an exercise to explore the potentials of two different approaches of design-under-pressure activities in a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary scenario was structured and implemented. The two sessions of this exercise were constructed around the co-creation method and the contributions that Design can offer to other fields of knowledge in their proof of concept phase. Students from the Development of New Food Products (DNFP) course, of the Master in Biochemistry from the University of Aveiro, collaborated with Design students from the University of Aveiro and the Izmir University of Economics looking for a designerly approach to their research findings. The end products from these activities were prototyped and presented at Design Factory Aveiro’s Food Design lab.
The outcomes reinforce the idea that by integrating design in an early stage of product development (being it food or other), helps building stronger results by anticipating problems, identifying solutions and mainly by adding narratives that enhance non tangible values. Form the Design perspective, we believe that this initiative reinforced the idea that designers need to have an elastic mind and that a concept can have multiple valid outcomes, which are symbiotic to context involved. In addition, it helped Design students to understand that problem solving processes in multidisciplinary working groups, are faster with a mediator and that negotiation must be corroborated with strong, grounded arguments.
