PHYGITAL SEASONING
Phygital Seasoning merges physical and digital experiences. Combining technology, design, sensory science and sensory analysis in augmented reality. The project imagines a day when any location can be altered to influence our taste perception and personalize our food experience.
Phygital Seasoning is the first prototype exploring a future-proof food system that challenges how we define, design, and experience food. It is a mixed-reality spatial design that uses augmented perception to influence how we taste — not by changing ingredients, but by changing the sensory context around them.
At its core lies the Mono-Product concept: a single, nutritionally optimized base food that can be digitally “seasoned” through light, sound, color, and scent to suit individual preferences. Instead of endless physical variations — pre-sweetened yoghurts, flavored sodas, chips or other ultra-processed foods — one base product can become endlessly adaptable, reducing overproduction, waste, packaging, and marketing excess.
Phygital Seasoning redefines taste as a designed experience of perception, not ingredients. It demonstrates that taste happens not only on the tongue, but in the brain and shows the future application possibility. By combining insights from neurogastronomy and sensory science with speculative design, this work proposes a new relationship between humans, technology, and food.
MONO-PRODUCT
This vision challenges today’s food system, where over 80% of our supermarket food is processed or ultra-processed. Snevele asks: do we need so many variations, the overproduction, the waste, and the unhealthy habits this system creates? As an alternative, she introduces the concept of the “mono-product”: a single optimized version of each staple product—chips, yogurt, soda, cookie, even wine or cheese—nutritious and enjoyable on its own, yet infinitely adaptable through digital seasoning. A “mono-product” could be made sweeter, crunchier, or infused with flavors from pineapple to black pepper, tailored to each person’s preference and even shared digitally with others.
The implications are radical. Food production could shift away from endless processed variations, failed product launches could be avoided by testing flavors digitally, product marketing gone digital and supermarkets as we know them might disappear, replaced by a simple delivery of base products ready to be seasoned at home. Daily life, social rituals, storage practices, and agricultural systems could all transform. Growing fresh produce might even become one of the most respected roles in society.
DESIGN THE PERCEPTION
We do not taste with our tongue alone. Research by scientists such as Professor Charles Spence at Oxford University shows that experience of food is constructed in the brain, where sensory inputs combine. Round, pink, soft, sweet-smelling, and light-sounding cues, for example, can make food taste sweeter. Many restaurants and brands already apply these findings to deliver holistic sensory experiences.
Designer Laila Snevele’s first project, Digital Seasoning (2018), experimented with visualizations of the five basic tastes on screen. From this work grew a realization: to move beyond isolated experiences, sensory augmentation must extend into everyday life. Phygital Seasoning proposes just that, speculating on the role augmented reality could play in transforming how we eat, grow, purchase, and relate to food.
PROJECT VIDEO COMING SOON