The Playful Potential of Shared Mealtime
Ferran Altarriba Bertran, Alexandra Pometko, Muskan Gupta, Lauren Wilcox, Reeta Banerjee, Katherine Isbister
Abstract
In this paper, we present an annotated portfolio of speculative ideas that emerged from a co-design process where we investigated the playful potential of day-to-day mealtime. Our portfolio illustrates the learnings from our participatory engagements: it embodies ours and our participants' ideas of how technology might support increasingly playful and socio-emotionally rich experiences around food. We contribute: (1) a list of play potentials of mealtime-i.e. people's existing playful practices with food-that will point designers towards socio-emotionally desirable play-food experiences; (2) a portfolio of speculative design ideas that illustrate how mealtime technology could help to realize that playful potential; and (3) a discussion of our participants' experiences with and responses to lo-fi prototypes of our ideas. Our work will provoke designers to carefully consider the impact of food-tech innovation on the quality of people's social eating experiences and inspire them to cultivate forms of food-play that are socio-emotionally rich.?