Rethinking Wine Tasting for Chinese Consumers: A Service Design Approach Enhanced by Multimodal Personalization

TL;DR

This study tackles the challenge of adapting wine tasting for Chinese consumers by employing a service-design framework grounded in contextual co-creation. It identifies three archetypes and develops culturally anchored metaphor mappings combined with real-time affective feedback to enhance engagement and comprehension. A partially implemented mobile tasting assistant integrates a metaphor-to-flavour engine, affective pacing, and dynamic visuals, showing high usability (SUS 84.1) and strong cultural resonance, particularly for novice tasters. The work contributes a culturally adaptive, affect-aware multimodal approach to CBMI and demonstrates practical pathways for embodied consumption experiences in tourism and related domains.

Abstract

Wine tasting is a multimodal and culturally embedded activity that presents unique challenges when adapted to non-Western contexts. This paper proposes a service design approach rooted in contextual co-creation to reimagine wine tasting experiences for Chinese consumers. Drawing on 26 in-situ interviews and follow-up validation sessions, we identify three distinct user archetypes: Curious Tasters, Experience Seekers, and Knowledge Builders, each exhibiting different needs in vocabulary, interaction, and emotional pacing. Our findings reveal that traditional wine descriptors lack cultural resonance and that cross-modal metaphors grounded in local gastronomy (e.g., green mango for acidity) significantly improve cognitive and emotional engagement. These insights informed a partially implemented prototype, featuring AI-driven metaphor-to-flavour mappings and real-time affective feedback visualisation. A small-scale usability evaluation confirmed improvements in engagement and comprehension. Our comparative analysis shows alignment with and differentiation from prior multimodal and affect-aware tasting systems. This research contributes to CBMI by demonstrating how culturally adaptive interaction systems can enhance embodied consumption experiences in physical tourism and beyond.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Photograph from the field during the co-creation session at a domestic Chinese winery.
• Figure 2: Participants interacting with cross-modal elicitation tools.
• Figure 3: Affinity diagram generated through collaborative analysis of interview transcripts.
• Figure 4: AI-enabled metaphor mapping interface with cultural descriptors.
• Figure 5: Visual storytelling elements linked to flavour metaphors.