Tech for a social eating experience

I did a thematic analysis of an online survey distributed to 35 people in California and Spain, which allowed me to identify themes in people's eating habits such as which types of uses of phones and technology create isolation from the social experience or a sensory distraction that detracts from mindfulness.

I also formulated design guidelines to help fellow designers and engineers to create technology that has a positive impact.

With our preliminary results in hand, we recruited 12 households to do a booklet of 7 activities related to eating to do during the week. These activities encouraged them to reflect on their dining and tech habits and engage in playful actions. For instance, one activity prompted participants to reminisce about enjoyable food-related moments and reenact them in brief videos, while another encouraged them to set aside their phones for a day, establish lighthearted penalties for rule-breakers, and contemplate the experience of a phone-free day.

Our aim was to uncover forms of social and playful dining experiences that resonated on a socio-emotional level and could inspire our designs.

After discovering many specific instances of play potentials and social connection from people's experiences around food, we used them to inspire our new technology concepts. Through several iterative brainstorming sessions where we sketched the contents of our brain on and on, we selected and refined a dozen of design concepts.

Ferran put those concepts in a speculative design catalog that illustrated and explained all of our ideas.

We then distributed this catalog to people to find out which ideas they thought were best and tested them remotely. We developed an innovative approach for remote stakeholder engagement in the co-design of interactive technology known as Designerly Tele-Experiences. This methodological framework allows participants to immerse themselves in initial design concepts within real-world contexts, encouraging them to offer fresh ideas that align with their personal experiential preferences.

This allowed us to see how people reacted to certain concepts or features, what the group dynamics were, and gave participants an opportunity to challenge and expand upon our ideas.