Aistikattila
Time: August 2024
Participants: 120
Objective:To understand and enhance the relationship between sensory stimuli, indoor environmental factors, and food taste and mouthfeel perception.
Implementation: The participants evaluated yoghurt-like products in multisensory environments in Aistikattila.
Collaboration: Nutrition and Food Research Center, University of Turku, and University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy, Department of Architecture and Industrial Design
Time: summer 2023
Participants: 62
Objective: To study the processing of auditory information in the brain during the viewing of different videos and the experiences and physiological reactions generated by the videos.
Implementation: As part of the FINSCI project. The research team utilized Aistikattila’s projection and video capabilities, and EEG measuring.
Time: summer 2023
Participants: 95
Objective: To develop pintxos typical of the Basque Country using Finnish ingredients, such as herring and oats, and to investigate how pleasant the different samples were perceived and how the eating environment influenced the experience of the food.
Implementation: Evaluation of different kinds of pintxos in a multisensory archipelago and field environment.
Collaboration: Nutrition and Food Research Center, University of Turku, and Basque Culinary Center, Spain
Time: Autumn 2021
Participants: 250
Objective:To study how the sound environment affects the dining experience and the duration of the meal.
Implementation: The participants ate a similar salad in Aistikattila in different sonic environments.
Collaboration: Nutrition and Food Research Center, University of Turku, and Aarhus University, Denmark
Restaurant and Cafe
Time: 2024
Participants: 147
Objective: To collect data on lunch customers’ food choices, eating experiences, and food waste, and to comprehensively understand lunch customers’ actions at Flavoria’s lunch lines.
Implementation: As part of the Dining Flow project. Following participants’ food choices and conducting a questionnaire.
Collaboration: Nutrition and Food Research Center, Department of Computing, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Turku School of Economics in the University of Turku
Time: 2022-2023
Objective: To develop meals with a smaller carbon footprint and to pilot them in self-service restaurants, such as Flavoria.
Implementation: As part of the Hiililounas (“Carbon Lunch”) project. Testing the meals as part of Flavoria’s lunch selection and collecting feedback from the customers and kitchen staff.
Time: Autumn 2022
Participants: approx. 200
Objective: To study Flavoria’s lunch customers’ attitudes, values, food choices and bio-waste amounts and to see how these change after providing different pieces of information.
Implementation: At Flavoria’s lunch line as part of the BIODIFUL project.
Time: 2022
Participants: 318
Objective: To study the sensory experience in Flavoria’s lunch restaurant.
Implementation: Collecting the sensory experiences with the Sensory Walk questionnaire.
Collaboration: Nutrition and Food Research Center, University of Turku, and Aistila Oy
Time: October-December 2021
Participants: 163
Objective: To investigate whether Finnish working-aged omnivores could be nudged into replacing red meat with a fava-bean-based protein source via “Dish of the Day” and main dish sequence alteration strategies in a controlled real-world Finnish self-service buffet restaurant.
Implementation: Flavoria’s lunch line.
Time: Autumn 2020, duration approx. 5 weeks
Objective:To explore the feasibility of using a combination of ceiling-mounted cameras and computer vision for estimating both the types and weights of individual food items the customers are taking in a lunch line restaurant.
Implementation: Combining Flavoria’s lunch line data with meal photos taken in Flavoria.
Experiences of conducting a study in Flavoria
Visiting researcher in Flavoria: Noor Fajrina Farah Istiani
From January to March this year, we had the pleasure of hosting a visiting doctoral researcher, Noor Fajrina Farah Istiani, from the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy. Noor is an interior architect and a doctoral researcher at SENS i-Lab, a human-centered, multi-physical and multi-purpose laboratory for the creation, development, prototyping, and interaction of humans with physical and virtual environments and systems, and she conducted an interesting pilot study in Flavoria's Aistikattila.
Visiting researcher in Flavoria: Signe Lund Mathiesen
In October and November 2021 we had the pleasure of welcoming in Flavoria Signe Lund Mathiesen, a PhD student from the University of Aarhus, who conducted in Flavoria and Aistikattila an interesting consumer research.