Feeling the Flavour: Exploring Children's Touch–Taste Correspondences and Willingness to Try Unknown Foods for Child–Food Interaction Design

How can we leverage taste expectations to create novel food-based experiences for children? Eating is an embodied process that engages multiple senses. Cross-sensory correspondences may offer educational and recreational opportunities to design interactive applications that encourage diversifying encounters with food. We present a study with 64 children (ages 10–11) who explored eight textured materials hidden inside mystery “food” boxes and reported both their expected tastes and willingness to eat. Our findings provide evidence of touch–taste cross-sensory correspondences in children – sweetness with weak-hard-brittle and strong-soft-brittle materials, and saltiness with a weak-soft brittle material – and how these mappings influenced children’s openness to unknown foods. These results provide empirical grounding for cross-sensory interaction design with children, demonstrating how texture could scaffold curiosity and learning. We outline design implications for cross-sensory food interfaces, non-edible public exhibits, and playful educational technologies that could broaden eating experiences and enable new forms of virtual food interaction.