The Taste Essay

On Taste

An essay by Pierre Vandenberghe

Emil Kowalski

Why taste matters and how to develop it.

Taste

On subjectivity, gatekeeping, and the risk of leaving design industry terms like taste undefined.

The McDonaldization of Taste | KQED

Which came first, the Big Mac or a consumer culture built on the need for immediate gratification in super sizes? In How We Eat: Appetite, Culture, and Psychology of Food, Leon Rappoport unveils social, psychological, spiritual, and political motivations for eating behavior. He initially became interested in the topic when he was learning the practices

Confessions of a professional taster: How one woman discovers problems in food factories, one bite at a time

Elspeth Copeland in a professional taster in high demand among major food companies in Canada and the U.S., because she can identify what’s going wrong in their factory, or their supply chain, or their formula, just by trying the product.

Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…

Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong | Defector

For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the…

From cultures to aesthetics between Asian and Western UX design

Since I moved to Europe from Asia and used to work for European company from Asia. I feel like I have to discuss the topic of design aesthetics, cultural influences and user behaviours.

Kindling — Regenerate Your Feed

Erase cruelty. Preserve critique.

Emil Kowalski

How to transfer taste into an AI.

British food was complex, multicultural and flavourful in the 18th century – despite what you might think

The King’s table was full of flavours from the British empire and beyond.

British food was complex, multicultural and flavourful in the 18th century – despite what you might think

The King’s table was full of flavours from the British empire and beyond.

Measuring the Hedonic and Utilitarian Dimensions of Consumer Attitude

This article reports the development and validation of a parsimonious, generalizable scale that measures the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions of consumer attitudes toward product categories and different brands within categories. The hedonic/utilitarian (HED/UT) scale includes ten semantic differential response items, five of which refer to the hedonic dimension and five of which refer to the utilitarian dimension of consumer attitudes. The authors conducted six studies to establish the unidimensionality, reliability, and validity of the two HED/UT subscales. In reaching the final scale, the authors also develop and implement a unique process of paring down a psychometrically sound but otherwise too large set of items. Nomological validity is established by replacing a typical, one-dimensional attitude toward the brand measure with the hedonic and utilitarian dimensions in a central route processing model. Results suggest that the hedonic and utilitarian constructs are two distinct dimensions of brand attitude and are reliably and validly measured by the HED/UT scale.