Learning from the veg box: designing unpredictability in agency delegation

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to enable applications that foster a more efficient, sustainable, and healthy way of life. If end-users are to take full advantage of these developments we foresee the need for future IoT systems and services to include an element of autonomy and support the delegation of agency to software processes and connected devices. To inform the design of such future technology, we report on a breaching experiment designed to investigate how people integrate an unpredictable service, through the veg box scheme, in everyday life. Findings from our semi-structured interviews and a two- week diary study with 11 households reveal that agency delegation must be warranted, that it must be possible to incorporate delegated decisions into everyday activities, and that delegation is subject to constraint. We further discuss design implications on the need to support people’s diverse values, and their coordinative and creative practices

Taste Your Emotions:An Exploration of the Relationship between Taste and Emotional Experience for HCI

Taste offers unexplored opportunities for novel user experiences in HCI, however it is difficult to design for. While most lab research has shown basic tastes are consistently associated with positive or negative emotional experiences, the value of these mappings in real-life scenarios is less explored. In this paper we leverage 3D food printing technologies to report an experimental study investigating the relationship between taste and emotional experience for use in HCI. We present four real-life scenarios: product rating, sports match results, experiential vignettes, and website usability, to explore the understanding of emotional meaning through tastes, as well as the use of tastes to express emotions. Our findings extend previous emotion mappings for sweet and bitter tastes to real-life scenarios. We also draw out fresh insights into the role of taste, flavor, and embodiment in experience design, reflecting on the role of 3D food printing in supporting taste interfaces

Sensory probes:An exploratory design research method for Human-Food Interaction

Designing interactions with food holds potential for rich multisensory experiences but their pervasiveness can challenge our understanding of them. This paper presents the design and evaluation of Sensory probes, a novel, exploratory design research method aimed to sensitize participants towards their food experiences. We report on workshops with 8 participants for co-designing the probes, followed by iterative revision through two-week diary studies with 18 participants. Findings indicate strong engagement with the sensory probes and how they brought forward the bodily and sensory aspects of these experiences, alongside emotional and social ones. We highlight the design rationale for the sensory probes which has been both empirically- and theoretically-grounded, provide reflections on the value of these probes for enabling novel perspectives on food experiences, and on probes’ ability to capture what we called sensory fragments of participants’ experience reflecting distinct sensory aspects form both internal and external senses

Exploring and designing for multisensory interactions with 3D printed food

Experience of food is as varied as it is widespread, part of mundane activities but also embedded in rituals and celebrations. Despite its pervasive richness it has yet to be fully exploited to support embodied and multisensory experiences within Human-Computer Interaction. This thesis addresses this shortcoming, drawing on the unique qualities of food experience in combination with novel technology to design rich, affective, and embodied interactions through food. This work approaches 3D printed food as a material to design emotion- and memory-based experiences with food, and 3D printing of food as a technology for crafting multisensory user experiences in everyday contexts. These perspectives are integrated through the design and evaluation of novel interactions with 3D printed food, following a Research through Design approach combined with material approaches. Through this enquiry, novel research tools for HCI were also created for working with food, flavour, and taste. The thesis comprises seven studies that advance knowledge, based on gaps identified, and novel theoretical framings in a systematic literature review. Through a survey of user perceptions of 3D printed food, opportunities for user experience-based applications were highlighted. An identified opportunity for affective interactions through taste was considered through lab-based studies and interviews with chefs and food designers on using 3D printed food. This was extended through a co-design study with couples in romantic relationships to create flavours of 3D printed food to support emotional expression and coregulation. The use of flavours to cue experience was then explored in relation to self-defining memories with older adults. Through both co-design studies, a multisensory probe kit was built and evaluated to support designing with the senses in HCI and to further explore ideas from the study into food and memory and an app prototype designed for creating personalised flavour-based memory cues. Collectively, these studies support applications of the 3D printing of food for emotional and memory-based applications in HCI, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to multisensory design and design with food and the body in HCI