We Who Eats: Understanding Food Perception upon First Sight Afdallyna Fathiyah Harun, Norhafiza Ruslan, and Saiful Izwan Suliman Universiti Teknologi MARA Shah Alam Selangor, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia Email: fdallyna@tmsk.uitm.edu.my Juhaida Ismail Universiti Teknologi MARA Pahang Kampus Raub, 27600 Raub, Pahang, Malaysia Hanif Baharin Institute of Visual Informatics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia Nor Laila Md Noor MyHCI-UX Malaysia Abstract—Images of food has been making a ubiquitous presence thanks to social media. People would use the social media to share and communicate about food. Some users are even drawn to travel around the world just to experience local delicacies. Often, they rely on web information and images to identify how local delicacies look like and in certain cases, predict its taste. Many food outlets or tourism sector use food image to market local food requiring users to tap into their visual cognition and perception of what it represents. However, little exploration has been done to understand if image can indeed simulate food taste particularly in the initial interaction with the food image. Therefore, we were motivated to understand user perception on local delicacies upon the first sight of its image. We applied the case study approach where we focused on three ‘Sarawak Layer Cakes’ to compare user perception of the cakes’ taste. Using Instagram as image mediator, users were requested to create hashtags that depicts how the food might taste like from the image alone. The hashtags were then analysed using content analysis where we found that appearance, perceived flavour and perceived texture affects user perception differently with the appearance dimension significantly affects user perception. Index Terms—digital taste, food digital experience, taste perception, taste experience, visual perception I. INTRODUCTION Culinary tourism or food tourism relates very much to food and eating experiences that occur when people travel. Malaysia offers a variety of food which can serve as an opportunity for Malaysia to become a culinary tourism destination in Asia [1] as local food is central to the tourist experience [2]. Henceforth, Malaysia should capitalize on food tourism where the benefits can be two-fold; global identification of Malaysian food as well as generate economic opportunities [3]. Manuscript received February 15, 2019; revised June 5, 2019. Ideas and images on local cuisine are increasingly embedded in the marketing collateral of tourist destinations [4] due to the core belief that food is an important element in tourist experience when choosing a holiday destination. It is only natural then most marketers have given attention to the presentation of images and textual description of local cuisine in their advertising materials (i.e. travel guides, brochures and websites) to market tourist destinations. Apart from the formal marketing initiatives, local delicacies are also promoted through social media where it is communicated as a form of celebration and experience sharing [5]. Such celebration is widespread that hashtags such as are #foodie, #foodporn and #foodgasm, among others, are evident across the Instagram platform with more than associated 216 million posts in 2017 alone [6]. Food taste might differ through expectation [7] as it is influenced by visual impressions of the food and its actual taste [8]. The former is attributed to many types of visual cues such as the colours of the food, shape of the plate it is served on, and the orientation of the food on the plate. Perception on the basic tastes of sweet, salty, umami, sour, and bitter as well as the oral sensation of fat, plays a vital role in determining food acceptance, preference, and choice [9]. According to [10], the taste of food is reformed by combined sensations in the mouth but nevertheless, senses such as vision, emotion, and the environmental circumstance can pre-affect the taste of food. Perception serves as an active and conscious act of seeking out and searching for cues within the stimulus information available to us [7], [11]. As such, food images can be used as a mediator to elicit taste perception. Nevertheless, is raises the question of how to stimulate taste sensations with respect to the various stimulation approaches and purposes of a stimulation [12]. 39 ©2019 Journal of Image and Graphics doi: 10.18178/joig.7.2.39-44 Journal of Image and Graphics, Vol. 7, No. June 2019 2,