Digital Taste Technology and the Future of HCI
TL;DR
Taste is chemically driven and among the least digitized of the senses.
Emerging research explores electric stimulation, ingestible sensors, and immersive dining experiences.
Designing for taste requires attention to safety, subjectivity, and cultural nuance, and raises new ethical questions around data, equity, and influence.
While full simulation may remain out of reach for a long time, digital taste could deepen how we share, recover, and learn through food.
The meal I always come back to
...is bangers and mash.
Sausages browned just right, buttery mash (still a little lumpy), English peas, and Bisto gravy poured over the lot. I’ve had that meal more times than I can count, and I remember who made it, how it felt, and why it mattered.
That kind of taste experience isn’t just about flavor. It’s about timing, context, and care. And it’s one of the few things digital systems still struggle to capture.
What Is Taste?
Taste is the only sense driven primarily by chemistry, and the last one to be meaningfully explored in HCI.
What we call "taste" is, in reality, a collaborative effort. The tongue detects five basic signals: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Other candidate tastes, such as fat, metallic, or starch, are also being studied. Smell, texture, and temperature complete the picture. Taste relies on touch, scent, and setting to be understood.
In human–computer interaction, taste is only beginning to surface. But a few exploratory areas are gaining traction:
Gustatory Interfaces: Devices that trigger taste sensations via small electrical currents or controlled chemicals
Edible Interfaces: Food-based media, including smart pills that transmit data or QR-coded chocolates used in artistic or brand activations
Synesthetic Substitution: Designing flavor experiences through indirect cues, like color, vibration, or sound
Unlike visual or auditory input, taste doesn't detach well from the body. That makes it harder to abstract and more revealing when we try.
Current Applications
Most taste technology remains experimental, but the range of exploration is expanding.
Digital Taste Simulation
Devices that stimulate the tongue with electrical or thermal signals can evoke basic sensations, such as sourness, bitterness, saltiness, or a metallic tang. Sweetness is harder to achieve reliably. The effects are limited, but they suggest where things could go.Multisensory Dining
Chefs and artists are combining sound, scent, and visuals to shape our perception of taste. Heston Blumenthal’s "Sound of the Sea" is a well-known example, where audio of crashing waves changes the way a dish tastes.Assistive Technologies
Projects are exploring how to restore taste for those who’ve lost it due to aging, illness, or treatment. These tools aim to reintroduce appetite and pleasure.Brain–Computer Interfaces (BCIs)
While we can’t stream flavor directly to the brain yet, BCI research is examining how neural signals relate to taste, cravings, and emotional responses to food. These have potential applications in therapy, wellness, and behavioral health.
These emerging technologies point toward more meaningful applications.
Use Cases and Experiments
These examples hint at how taste might support more than just novelty:
Remote Culinary Collaboration
Cooking with someone across the globe? Imagine syncing flavor stages or triggering shared taste cues alongside video. Taste becomes a layer of presence.Therapeutic Support
For patients struggling with appetite or nausea, even subtle taste cues can support recovery and emotional well-being.VR and AR Dining
In immersive environments, taste is being paired with spatial audio, scent, and interactive visuals to create meals that are as much a story as sustenance.Empathy and Memory Tools
Experimental setups use taste to recall memory, as part of therapy, grief work, or storytelling. Flavor becomes a bridge to moments we didn’t realize we stored.Education and Training
From nutrition education to culinary skill-building, taste technology may eventually augment how we teach, simulate, and rehearse human scenarios.
Challenges and Limitations
Digitizing taste means confronting barriers beyond code.
Safety and Hygiene
Devices that enter the mouth must meet higher health standards. Reliability isn’t enough. They must also be safe and repeatable.Hardware Constraints
Taste requires direct contact. Most prototypes are fragile, bulky, or difficult to scale.Subjectivity and Culture
Taste is personal and cultural. What delights in one setting may repel in another. This makes standardization hard and personalization critical.Sensory Interdependence
Isolating taste often breaks the illusion. Without smell or touch, even well-designed taste cues fall flat.Lack of Shared Standards
With no dominant frameworks or shared design principles, progress in digital taste remains fragmented.
Taste resists simplification. That’s not a flaw. It’s a clue to its value.
Ethical Considerations
Designing for taste raises layered responsibilities: biological, emotional, and social.
Consent and Influence
Flavor can shape perception and behavior without much awareness. Designers must be transparent when taste is used to steer experience.Access and Priorities
Digital flavor tech is evolving in luxury contexts, while food insecurity persists. This imbalance demands attention.Health and Risk
Edible devices and stimulators require rigorous vetting. But even non-invasive tools must be deployed with care.Data and Surveillance
If taste response becomes trackable, we face new privacy challenges. Appetite data is still biometric data.Cultural Respect
Flavor isn’t just preference. It carries memory, culture, and care. AI-generated taste experiences should respect culinary histories, rather than extracting them.System Design and Emotional Impact
Just as service design can shape how we feel seen, the adoption of taste technologies raises questions about how systems influence care, and whether that care is felt or merely optimized.Algorithmic Narrowing
Personalization may reduce exposure to unfamiliar foods. When systems optimize for comfort, curiosity can fade.
Ethical taste design means more than safety. It means care for bodies, communities, and cultural memory.
Future Trends
Personalized Flavor Algorithms
AI could one day learn your dietary history, genetics, and mood patterns to tailor flavor experiences or simulate them entirely.Multi-Sensory Accessibility
For people with hearing or visual impairments, taste could become a compensatory channel for immersion or emotional depth.Digital Rituals and Shared Meals
Virtual gatherings might evolve to include synchronized flavor cues, supporting new forms of presence across distance.Edible Media and Sustainable Design
Food can serve as an interface in various practical roles, including health, learning, and sustainability. That includes ingestible sensors and content you literally consume.
Taste may never be frictionless. But the very things that make it difficult could unlock what makes it meaningful.
Try This
Start by gently pinching your nose, then take a bite of something familiar, maybe an apple slice, a cracker, or a piece of toast.
Now try another bite with your nose unpinched.
Notice the difference?
This simple experiment demonstrates how much of what we perceive as taste relies on smell, and why replicating flavor in digital systems is so challenging.
Looking Ahead
Taste completes the five foundational senses in this series, but we’re not done.
We’ve explored how technology engages the human body through touch, sound, vision, smell, and now taste. Each sense revealed a different challenge, a different opportunity, and a different way of thinking about what it means to design systems that interact with people through our senses.
Next, we’ll explore how HCI can unlock new forms of perception, from ultrasonic hearing to magnetic orientation, and what it means when technology extends our senses beyond biology.
Further Reading
Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters by Gordon M. Shepherd (2012)
Seminal book exploring how the brain processes flavor through multisensory integration.
Multisensory Flavor Perception: From Fundamental Neuroscience Through to the Marketplace
Edited by Betina Piqueras-Fiszman and Charles Spence (2016)
Comprehensive volume bridging neuroscience research with practical food industry applications.
Tongue Mounted Interface for Digitally Actuating the Sense of Taste by Nimesha Ranasinghe et al. (2012)
Foundational paper introducing wearable devices for electrical and thermal stimulation of taste buds.
(Points to the UIST conference paper presented in 2012; link leads to metadata and citation page with access options.)
Miniaturized, Portable Gustation Interfaces for VR/AR/MR by Y. Liu et al. (2024)
Breakthrough research on lollipop-shaped devices enabling nine different flavors in virtual environments.
Multisensory Flavor Perception by Charles Spence (2015)
Essential review detailing how senses interact to create flavor experiences in the brain.
