WiseFood Living Labs Complete Co-Design Workshops Across Three Countries
As part of the WiseFood project – a Horizon Europe initiative developing AI-powered tools to support healthier and more sustainable food choices – its three Living Labs in Ireland, Slovenia, and Hungary have recently held co-design workshops with everyday citizens. The sessions offered participants an opportunity to test three applications currently in development: FoodScholar, RecipeWrangler, and FoodChat – tools designed to help people make informed, sustainable decisions about the food they eat.
Ireland: Inclusive Sessions in Dublin
The WiseFood Irish Living Lab wrapped up its co-design workshops in March, with sessions led by partners at the RCSI School of Population Health. Eighteen participants from a variety of household backgrounds took part across three sessions – one held face-to-face and two online – ensuring that geography and lifestyle were no barrier to participation. To help participants engage with the apps as real future users, the team introduced a set of personas and a short prototype walkthrough video, both of which sparked lively and grounded discussion. Participants evaluated each app from their own household’s perspective, flagged usability challenges, and shared concrete ideas for the next iteration. The quality of feedback – practical, nuanced, and rooted in lived experience – was a highlight of the sessions.
Slovenia: Intergenerational Exchange in Pomurje
On March 26, the Slovenian Living Lab led by Green Point Living Lab partners hosted its co-design workshop in the Pomurje Region. More than 20 participants took part, stepping into everyday user roles and exploring how different people would react to real-life food-related scenarios. Working side by side, attendees reflected on their user experience with the three apps, identified practical barriers to adoption, and proposed meaningful improvements. The session was a reminder that lasting, user-centred solutions are built through exactly this kind of collaborative, intergenerational exchange – where diverse perspectives inform and enrich one another.
Hungary: Role-Play and Real Needs at Central European University
The Hungarian Living Lab co-design workshop took place on March 20 at the Central European University, jointly led by WiseFood partners ESSRG and the Wasteless Foundation. Nineteen participants engaged with four distinct personas, using them as a lens to reflect on food-related behaviours, identify challenges, and suggest improvements to the apps. The session combined a short introductory screening with interactive role-playing exercises, allowing participants to engage with FoodScholar, RecipeWrangler, and FoodChat in realistic household scenarios. The co-design approach encouraged participants to go beyond surface-level testing – assessing usability in real-life contexts, identifying structural and behavioural barriers, and co-developing ideas to enhance both functionality and social impact. The insights gathered will directly support the further development of the applications, helping to make them more relevant, practical, and user-centred.
Building Tools That Reflect Real Lives
Across all three countries, these WiseFood Living Lab co-design workshops reinforced a core principle of the project: that meaningful digital innovation cannot happen in isolation from the people it aims to serve. The diverse, candid feedback collected from participants in Dublin, Pomurje, and Budapest will feed directly into the next phase of application development – ensuring that FoodScholar, RecipeWrangler, and FoodChat are not only technically sound, but genuinely responsive to the needs and realities of everyday households.
Want to learn more about WiseFood and the tools we are developing? Visit our homepage to start exploring the project fully and follow our progress.