Disrupting (More-than-) Human-Food Interaction

Abstract

Digital technology has become a frequent companion of daily food practices, shaping the ways we produce, consume, and interact with food. Smart kitchenware, diet tracking apps, and other techno-solutions carry promise for healthy and sustainable food futures but are often problematic in their impact on food cultures. We conducted four Human-Food Interaction (HFI) workshops to reflect on and anticipate food-tech issues, using experimental food design co-creation as our primary method. At the workshops, food and food practices served as the central research theme and accessible starting point to engage stakeholders and explore values, desires, and imaginaries associated with food-tech. Drawing on these explorations, we discuss diverse roles that experimental design cocreation, performed with and around food, can play in supporting critical, interdisciplinary HFI inquiries. Our findings will appeal to design researchers interested in food as a research theme or as a tangible (and compostable!) design material affording diverse co-creative engagements.

Sensory Probes: An Exploratory Design Research Method for Human-Food Interaction

“…Despite its breadth, [24], most such work has employed traditional research and design methods, with limited effort towards novel exploratory design research methods tailored to the unique qualities of food as resource for design. The few attempts in this direction include a framework for designing temporal, embodied and affective experiences with taste [46], material food probes for the exploration of flavors in intimate relationships [23], drawing on 'play potentials' [2] to reinterpret existing cultural food experiences, and experimental food crafting to explore its value for new interactive food technologies [16]. These valuable contributions however are narrowly focused either on a single aspect of sensory experience (taste) or tied to a particular food material (liquid-based 3D printed food).…”

Algorithmic Food Justice: Co-Designing More-than-Human Blockchain Futures for the Food Commons

“…Within HCI, researchers are starting to acknowledge such varied and heterogeneous relations between humans, other species and technology within food systems, as documented in recent work in the field of Human-Food Interaction [1,15] and explored in a recent workshop at DIS on "Designing with More-than-Human Food Practices for Climate-Resilience" [14]. Emerging research in this field advocates for a shift within human-food interactions to support creative, equitable, and sustainable more-than-human food practices, by leveraging "more-than-human perspectives to support environmentally sustainable food-tech innovation" [15]. For, as Clarke et.…”

Designing Kitchen Technologies for Ageing in Place

“…These interventions are built on interactions with cooking appliances, digital meal-sharing apps, and the shared experience of cooking together at a distance. Designing food practices as complex, socially and emotionally charged events in everyday life requires cultural awareness and sensitivity towards the traditions and experiences of individuals [11].…”