The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices

With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people leverage technology to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging while eating. In this paper, we look at digital commensality and we explore its inherent playful potential with the aim to inspire the design of engaging technologies that can support, enhance and augment this form of interaction. For this, we used a situated play design approach to document and analyze the behavior of 36 people (including pairs of friends and strangers) sharing meals online. Our analysis surfaced a set of play potentials of remote dining -- i.e., playful things people already do and enjoy spontaneously while sharing meals online. We present those play potentials as inspirational material: they can motivate and enrich the design of future digital commensality technologies by responding to people's desire for playful and social interaction with, through, and around food

The Future of Human-Food Interaction

There is an increasing interest in food within the HCI discipline, with many interactive prototypes emerging that augment, extend and challenge the various ways people engage with food, ranging from growing plants, cooking ingredients, serving dishes and eating together. Grounding theory is also emerging that in particular draws from embodied interactions, highlighting the need to consider not only instrumental, but also experiential factors specific to human-food interactions. Considering this, we are provided with an opportunity to extend human-food interactions through knowledge gained from designing novel systems emerging through technical advances. This workshop aims to explore the possibility of bringing practitioners, researchers and theorists together to discuss the future of human-food interaction with a particular highlight on the design of experiential aspects of human-food interactions beyond the instrumental. This workshop extends prior community building efforts in this area and hence explicitly invites submissions concerning the empirically-informed knowledge of how technologies can enrich eating experiences. In doing so, people will benefit not only from new technologies around food, but also incorporate the many rich benefits that are associated with eating, especially when eating with others

ÇOKLU DUYUSAL ÜRÜN TASARIMINDA FİKİR GELİŞTİRME İÇİN SİNESTETİK DÜŞÜNME

Bu çalışma, sinestezinin tasarım sürecinde ilham ve/veya yöntem olarak kullanımını tartışan çalışmalara dair sistematik bir literatür taraması sunmaktadır. Çalışmada, sinestetik düşünmenin çoklu duyusal ürün tasarımında bir fikir geliştirme yöntemi olarak potansiyeli değerlendirilmiş ve sinestezinin ürün tasarımı alanındaki uygulamaları ile ilgilenen tasarımcılara ve araştırmacılara bir içgörü sunulması amaçlanmıştır. İncelenen 21 akademik yayının tematik analizi sonucunda, (1) duyusal bağlantıların tasarım sürecinin fikir geliştirme aşamasında kapsamlı bir şekilde incelenmesi ve stratejik bir şekilde kullanımı, (2) tasarım sürecinde sinestetik deneyimlere dayalı geleneksel olmayan yöntemlerin kullanımı ve (3) tasarım sürecinde disiplinler arası iş birliği ve kullanıcı geri bildirimleri ile sinestetik düşünmenin aktive edilmesini ifade eden üç tema elde edilmiştir. Elde edilen bulgular, algısal, metaforik ve temsili yönleriyle sinestezinin, tasarım sürecinin özellikle fikir geliştirme aşamasında güçlü bir yöntem olma niteliği taşıdığını işaret eder. Sinestetik düşünme yöntemi ile estetik, işlevsel, duyusal, duygusal vb. ürün özelliklerinin belirlenmesi, tasarım fikrinin somutlaşması vb. konusunda duyu odaklı ve insan odaklı bir yaklaşım ile, kullanıcıların duyusal, davranışsal ve duygusal deneyimlerinin zenginleştirilmesi mümkündür. Sinestetik düşünme, farklı duyusal modaliteler arasındaki ilişkiler, metaforik bağlantılar, duyusal kombinasyonlar ile duyguların eşleştirilmesi, olağan/olağandışı duyusal etkileşimler vb. ile yeni ürün özellikleri ve kullanıcı deneyimlerine ilham olabilecek duyusal bağlantılar sunar. Aynı zamanda, sinestetik deneyim ve unsurların hedeflenen ürün-kullanıcı etkileşimi ve deneyimi ile ilişkisini keşfetmeye yardımcı olacak senaryolar geliştirilmesini sağlar. Bu bağlamda, ürün tasarımı süreçlerinde sinestetik yaklaşımın benimsenmesi, hem tasarımcılara geleneksel tasarım yöntemlerinin ötesine geçen daha yaratıcı, sistematik yöntemler sunar hem de kullanıcıların duyusal algı sistemlerini harekete geçiren daha özgün ve yenilikçi ürünlerin tasarlanmasına olanak tanır

Computational Commensality: from theories to computational models for social food preparation and consumption in HCI

Food and eating are inherently social activities taking place, for example, around the dining table at home, in restaurants, or in public spaces. Enjoying eating with others, often referred to as “commensality,” positively affects mealtime in terms of, among other factors, food intake, food choice, and food satisfaction. In this paper we discuss the concept of “Computational Commensality,” that is, technology which computationally addresses various social aspects of food and eating. In the past few years, Human-Computer Interaction started to address how interactive technologies can improve mealtimes. However, the main focus has been made so far on improving the individual's experience, rather than considering the inherently social nature of food consumption. In this survey, we first present research from the field of social psychology on the social relevance of Food- and Eating-related Activities (F&EA). Then, we review existing computational models and technologies that can contribute, in the near future, to achieving Computational Commensality. We also discuss the related research challenges and indicate future applications of such new technology that can potentially improve F&EA from the commensality perspective

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

Towards Understanding the Design of Playful Gustosonic Experiences with Ice Cream

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