Context-Based Interactive Experience Design System for Children's Food Education

The issues of childhood dietary disorders and obesity are becoming increasingly severe. Helping children to correctly perceive food is crucial for their healthy development. Current food education tools fail to connect dimensions such as food knowledge, food manipulation, food interest, and food etiquette, making it difficult to establish a correct food cognition from an early age. Learning and development of knowledge are often enhanced and consolidated through situational interaction. Therefore, introducing a contextual learning model into children’s food education to build a comprehensive experience system that encompasses personal context, physical context, and sociocultural context is essential. Stimulating children’s positive emotional experiences with food through situational resources thereby enhances their intrinsic motivation to learn. Methodology: Firstly, 15 food education situational elements were identified through literature review. Secondly, data from the target group was collected using a questionnaire survey and analyzed using factor analysis, principal component analysis, and correlation analysis. Finally, an interactive experience model for food education was constructed based on the revised situational elements, and design strategies were proposed. Significance: This study provides new perspectives and methods for food education experience design. By enriching children’s multisensory interactive experiences, it deepens their understanding of food at cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dimensions, thereby compensating for the lack of emotional dimension in traditional food education.