Avoid that coffee before you shop?
Biswas and team report that “Consumers often shop online and in physical stores immediately after or while consuming caffeine. This is further facilitated by the increasing prevalence of coffee shops and also with some...
Restaurant Design
When you’re in a restaurant, it’s likely that you have at least a passing interest in eating healthy. Design can help you do just that. If you are designing a new space for an...
Soundscapes and Eating
Peng-Li and colleagues report that “Soft nature sounds [ocean waves] and loud restaurant noises [chattering and tableware noises] were employed to induce emotional relaxation and arousal respectively. One hundred and one healthy university students...
What colour to paint café walls?
Cosgun and associates report the findings of a virtual reality based research project: “This study aims to determine the effects of wall covering materials (wood, concrete and metal) used indoors on participants’ perceptual evaluations....
Eating red…
Does the colour of your plates make a difference to the amount and what you eat? Steele and Rash how red dishes affect what we eat… They share that that two previously published “articles...
Ever wondered why green or red affect your coffee shop choice?
Motoki and teammates studied coffee shop design. They report that “Ratings of taste expectations, likelihood of visiting, and emotions were evaluated for each of 50 coffee shop images. . . . The results demonstrate...
Sounds and Snacks
Switch on the Classical and Jazz if you’re trying to eat healthy! Motoki and colleagues probe links between sounds heard and food preferences. They found that when “participants rated their preferences for each of...
One Mousse, Two Mousse, Yes Mousse, NO Mousse!
The Space Doctors have written another poem for you in the style of Dr Seuss! We hope you enjoy it! If you would like your very own higher resolution PDF copy to send to your...
Did you know that your home design can help you eat healthily?
We are writing this as we enter a new year, but you might also be preparing to design a new home, a new space or getting ready to move completely. Well, we have some...
Carefully consider the Cart
This is an interesting one. Ever wondered why shopping trolley handles are the way they are? Ever wondered if they were designed differently how that would affect our spending habits? Well, Estes and Streicher...
How to Encourage Conversation at a Party
Science makes it clear that there are some hard and fast rules about spaces where people have great conversations—you can apply them throughout your home, creating multiple conversation zones—even if you don’t have any...
How to make Food taste nicer! The Definitive Guide!
So, you’ve got people coming over and you’d like them to leave with memories of eating all sorts of yummy (and if you’re really hardcore, nutritious) food at your party—and you definitely don’t want...
Healthy shapes
We had a reader’s question on this too in November 2021. Trying to get someone to eat healthy? Wang, Zhang, and Jiang determined via multiple experiments that “angular shapes are associated with healthy food,...
Entertaining and Eating Together
One of the fabulous things about autumn is the cosying up and cooking for family and friends (as well as just for ourselves). Creating a space for comfortable eating in your home is important...
Fall and Food
One of the first questions that generally gets asked about design and eating is if colours on walls, plates, etc., can influence how much we eat. The answer: surface colours do indeed influence our...
How to help Someone get their Appetite back?
Trying to increase the likelihood that someone will eat something? Consider Zhou, Chen, and Li’s findings: “Despite being a fundamental food feature, the effect of food shapes has been underexplored. This study demonstrates that...
Pink and Green and how we perceive the taste
De Sousa and colleagues report that “participants expected the coffee associated with the pink label to taste sweeter than the green labelled coffee, whereas the coffee associated with the green label was expected to...
Sweet Roundness
Motoki and Velasco found that “People associate tastes and visual shapes non-randomly. For example, round shapes are associated with sweet taste, while angular shapes are associated with sour and bitter tastes. Previous studies have...
Planning a Party? – The Long Read
The PARTY CHECKLIST! It’s probably been a while since you’ve been able to plan any sort of gathering that includes more than you and your cat. Neuroscientists (who would no doubt by this time...
Colours and Taste
Regular readers of The Space Doctors will already be aware of the weird fact that the colours we surround ourselves with or look at while we’re eating affect how much we eat. for instance,...
Healthy Eating – Aided by Design!
The weather finally turning warm each year is a wonderful moment. It’s that time when we can leave our homes without the coats and sweaters that have encased us for months. Our moods near...
Eating out!
Restaurant Design Eating out is fun, and restaurants are often create places to spend time. Restaurants are also designed to encourage you to eat, particularly items that have great profit margins. Design significantly influences...
Spaces for Mingling
How to design for Mingling We have had a whole issue on this in April 2021 so be sure to check that out. But one of the most important aspects of our lives as...
Restaurant Plants
Yildirim and colleagues found that people have a positive response to plants in restaurants and it is logical to extend their findings to other situations in which people may be eating. The researchers found...
Bake-Off a Winner!
Are you following The Great British Bake-Off? If you are, that’s great because Bake-Off’s sets are doing all sorts of good things from an environmental psych perspective. The Bake-Off happens in a tent, which...
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…
Seeing oneself in a mirror makes it more likely we’ll follow the rules that our society has set for us, so they’re good options for places such as entry areas where properly stowing boots...
Lighting conditions that give you more self-control
Do you spend too much, eat too much, or do anything too much? You might be interested to know that you have more self control in certain sorts of light than in others. This...
Influence Appetite
Research generally shows that our appetites get a boost when we’re in a space that features warmish colours and is quashed in areas that mainly use cooler ones. Also, to keep our appetites in...
Support Pleasant Interactions with Other People
Amiable exchanges with other people make our lives better in so many ways, and surface colours can boost them along. Warm colours in a place where you’re planning to spend time with others, whether that’s...
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