Selecting the best taste: a group decision-making application to chocolates design

Creation and design of products based on human sensory perceptions, such as color, smell or taste, require the participation of professionals or experts with highly developed sensory abilities. When a group of experts is involved in such creative process as a team, consensus and group decision-making (GDM) techniques able to deal with qualitative descriptions and uncertainty, can be required. In this paper we consider a methodology based upon qualitative reasoning techniques for representing and synthesizing the information given by a group of experts in order to capture the sensorial aspects of the alternatives. A real application of the proposed GDM method to chocolates design has been conducted throughout 2012 with the Chocolate Chef Oriol Balaguer's team. We present the results obtained by applying the proposed methodology to aggregate experts' opinion during a creative session. In this session, some members of Oriol Balaguer's team tested and evaluated combinations of black chocolate with six different fruits, considered as alternatives, to select the best combination for the design and creation of a new cake.