Searching for triangles: An extension to food & packaging

Two laboratory-based visual search experiments (Experiments 1 and 2) and an online survey (Experiment 3) were conducted in order to investigate the visual search for triangular foods. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the visual search for a downward pointing triangular target was faster than when the same target pointed upward, regardless of whether the stimuli were simple geometric figures or photos of food. Experiment 2 replicated these results using images of both food and non-food packaging. Experiment 3 revealed that the same triangular stimuli were generally rated as less pleasant, less liked, and less familiar when they pointed downward than when they pointed upward. Taken together, these results therefore suggest that the cognitive processing of food images is influenced by incidental aspects of their visual appearance, and that such a pattern of results can also be extended to the case of food packaging.     

An application of definitive screening designs (DSDs) to a food product optimization and adaptations to jones & nachtsheim methodology for fitting DSD models

This paper describes a practical application of a DSD – Definitive Screening Design, in which its powerful properties were used to successfully obtain optimized cost while maintaining Overall Liking scores of a food product with a single screening experiment with six (6) ingredients, as allowed by DSDs projectivity property. The algorithm for model fitting, recently introduced by the creators of DSD, Jones & Nachtsheim, was adapted for a higher flexibility in considering researcher’s previous knowledge. Simulation work is conducted to evaluate such adaptations in a broader range of scenarios.