Cooperating with designers to develop new food products and health interventions – Presented by Rick Schifferstein, TU Delft,  at the Healthy Nutrition Conference, 27 June 2018, Brightlands Campus, Venlo, The Netherlands.

Insights from research typically form the starting point for developing interventions that aim to improve people’s health and wellbeing. But how can we take this to the next step, in order to create the most effective innovations? Whereas researchers have mainly been trained to observe, register, analyse, and report on people’s behaviour, developing a new food product or a health intervention involves a creative process that requires a different type of expertise. Hence, cooperation with designers who have extensive expertise in creating possible solutions is likely to make this process easier and more engaging, it will open up new possibilities, and it will facilitate the shaping and implementation of the innovation.

In this presentation, Rick Schifferstein will demonstrate the potential value of designers by discussing their added value in food innovation processes. In addition, he will show some examples of design projects that tackle challenges that agriculture, the food industry and health professionals are facing today.

What do you hope people to learn from your presentation?
Designers are professionals who are explicitly trained to be creative. Involving their expertise in innovations in agriculture, the food industry, and disease prevention is highly desirable, to tackle the many challenges these sectors are facing.

About Rick Schifferstein
Rick (H.N.J.) Schifferstein is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of Delft University of Technology. His research focuses on the factors that determine how people perceive and experience products, and how this information can be used to help companies design and produce better products. His topics of interest include (multi)sensory perception, food design, and experience-driven innovation. He contributed to more than 70 papers in international scientific journals, including Acta Psychologica, Food Quality and Preference, Chemical Senses, Materials & Design, and International Journal of Design. He is principal editor of the International Journal of Food Design, and co-editor of the books Food, People and Society (2001), Product Experience (2008), From Floating Wheelchairs to Mobile Car Parks (2011), and Advanced Design Methods for Successful Innovation (2013). With his company Studio ZIN, he facilitates workshops that stimulate the innovative and creative powers of people and organizations.

About TU Delft
TU Delft is the largest and oldest Dutch public technological university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It counts as one of the best universities for engineering and technology worldwide, typically seen within the top 20. It is repeatedly considered the best university of technology in the Netherlands.

With eight faculties and numerous research institutes,[9] it hosts over 19,000 students (undergraduate and postgraduate), more than 2,900 scientists, and more than 2,100 support and management staff.

About Agrifood Innovation Event
The Agrifood Innovation Event is a dedicated and focused business and research platform, unique in bringing together European and global companies from the entire food industry chain: supply chain with customers, producers, retailers and researchers.

The Agrifood Innovation Event is a two-day Event (June 27-28, 2018) that includes 4 dedicated conferences and an expo.