Food design is a relatively new discipline that requires designers to become familiar with several areas that are not currently covered in many design curricula, such as agriculture, the food industry, culinary processes and the hospitality industry. To inspire, enrich and facilitate food design processes, we developed and tested a card set reflecting the richness of the food design field. After literature review, we clustered findings into seven main categories: agriculture, industrial processing, distribution & marketing, kitchen management, eater, consumption situation, and policy & legislation. Each category is represented by five topic cards and one overview card. The card set is accompanied by instructions for six exercises. Testing the card set among individual designers and student groups showed that it was considered useful in multiple stages of the design process. In the beginning of the design process, it was used to gain overview and to inspire. Along the process, it enhanced brainstorming, facilitated discussions, created scenarios and refined ideas. In later stages, the variety of topics was helpful in evaluating whether all important design aspects had been considered.

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This paper starts out with a discussion of the importance of user-centred design, outlining its history and current embodiment in national and international standards and considers its particular relevance in addressing the needs of ageing populations. The paper moves on to examine how the premise of user-centred design has been taken up in education and focuses on the specific example of user-centred approaches as part of the Design and Technology requirement of the English National Curriculum, taught in England's schools since 1989. The initial stage of the Designing our Tomorrow project presented in this paper was an investigation of the extent to which user-centred design was integrated in current teaching practice. Analysing baseline data collected from teachers and pupils at two state secondary schools the project team found that many of the tasks teachers planned for pupils did not provide opportunities to identify users' needs when solving design problems. Finally, the paper presents a discussion of the project's implications for pupils' learning and understanding of Design and Technology.@en