Designing Recipes for Digital Food Futures

Abstract

Digital food technologies such as diet trackers, food sharing apps, and 'smart' kitchenware offer promising yet debatable food futures. While proponents suggest its potential to prompt efficient food lifestyles, critics highlight the underlying technosolutionism of digital food innovation and limitations related to health safety and data privacy. This workshop addresses both present and near-future digital food controversies and seeks to extend the existing body of Human-Food Interaction (HFI) research. Through scenarios and food-tech prototyping navigated by bespoke Digital Food Cards, we will unpack issues and suggest possible design approaches. We invite proposals from researchers, designers, and other practitioners interested in working towards a complex framework for future HFI research.

Full text

Designing Recipes for Digital Food
Futures
Abstract
Digital food technologies such as diet trackers, food
sharing apps, and 'smart' kitchenware offer promising
yet debatable food futures. While proponents suggest
its potential to prompt efficient food lifestyles, critics
highlight the underlying technosolutionism of digital
food innovation and limitations related to health safety
and data privacy. This workshop addresses both
present and near-future digital food controversies and
seeks to extend the existing body of Human-Food
Interaction (HFI) research. Through scenarios and food-
tech prototyping navigated by bespoke Digital Food
Cards, we will unpack issues and suggest possible
design approaches. We invite proposals from
researchers, designers, and other practitioners
interested in working towards a complex framework for
future HFI research.
Author Keywords
human food interaction; digital food cultures; food design;
quantified diets; kitchenware; food sharing
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,
HCI): Miscellaneous
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Markéta Dolejšová
National University of Singapore
marketa@u.nus.edu
Rohit Ashok Khot
RMIT University, Melbourne,
Australia
rohit@exertiongameslab.org
Hilary Davis
Swinburne University of
Technology, Melbourne, Australia
hdavis@swin.edu.au
Hasan Shahid Ferdous
University of Melbourne, Australia
hasan.ferdous@unimelb.edu.au
Andrew Quitmeyer
National University of Singapore,
cnmqaj@nus.edu.sg

Introduction
Technology design is increasingly contributing to
people's everyday food lifestyles, which raises many
opportunities and concerns about the future of food
systems. The entanglements of digital technology and
food cultures have brought about various types of
'fruit', ranging from community-driven food sharing
platforms [10,23] to 700$ juicers that can squeeze a
bag of mashed fruit with almost the same efficiency as
a pair of human hands [11]. While claiming that "food
is the new internet" [19] food-tech proponents tend to
portray technology as a means to revolutionize food
systems. On the other hand, critics see such digital
food efforts as a prime example of technological
solutionism - the undue belief that technology design
can fully solve complex societal problems [17,18].
HCI community has addressed the opportunities and
limitations of digital technology in everyday food
practices under the umbrella framework of Human-
Food Interaction (HFI) [1,4,12,13]. For instance,
Dolejšová & Kera [8] show positive impacts of diet
tracking and data sharing services on users' food
literacy but highlight related health safety and data
security risks. Lupton & Turner [16] identified the
potential of 3D food printing kitchenware in user's
playful engagement with personal dietary health, but
also its undue distance from present food cultures and
users' food routines. Scholars have frequently
discussed the positive environmental impacts of digital
technology used for the sharing of home cooked meals,
seasonal harvest, and food leftovers [4,10,23]. The
same food sharing technologies have also been
criticized for contributing to the food market
fragmentation and for their limited affordances
regarding public health safety [23]. Opportunities and
limitations of digital systems (e.g., open maps, drones,
mobile apps, IoT sensors) in promoting sustainable
behavior have been explored in the context of wild food
practices such as foraging, dumpster diving, and food
growing [2,6,7,15]. Interactive digital technology was
shown to have positive impacts on commensality
experiences at a family dinner table [9], while at the
same time reinforcing intergenerational gaps regarding
digital literacy [3]. Kuznetsov et al. [15] suggested a
potential use of digital technology in advancing at-
home food science activities such as DIY food
fermentation. In contrast, Dolejšová & Kera [7] saw
only a peripheral interest of fermentation enthusiasts in
using 'hacked' digital gadgets for their DIY food
experiments. Although still in its infancy, and without
providing firm conclusions, the emerging body of HFI
research outlines digital food issues and concerns such
as these, and invites further interdisciplinary research.
Motivation and Goals
This workshop seeks to extend the existing body of HFI
research by addressing personal, social, environmental,
and policy implications of digital technologies used in
everyday food practices. More specifically, our focus is
on a technology used for:
• food making (e.g., 'smart' kitchenware
[12,13,16]; AI-based and digitally augmented
cookbooks [5,20])
• diet planning (e.g., diet tracking devices and
personalized nutrition services [8,21])
• food sharing (e.g., digital food sharing
platforms, open mapping and ubicomp systems
[4,7,10,23])
• dining (e.g., social dining services and
intergenerational interaction at the dinner table
[5,9])

• food play (e.g., celebratory technology [9,12],
food-based games [1])
We will approach these digital food practices as a
contested area navigated by multiple stakeholders from
corporate and governmental, as well as private and
NGO sectors. We are also interested in digital food
practices originating from personal interaction between
co-located and dispersed parties such as families,
friends, neighbors and co-workers. Our aim is to
critically unpack issues surrounding digital food
technologies and address questions such as: What are
the advantages and challenges that digital food
technology brings into users' everyday life? How can we
design to scaffold the development of playful but also
sustainable and just digital food cultures? What issues
are faced in contemporary HFI research and how could
we address them in the future?
Building on our inaugural SIG CHI meeting at CHI 2017
[13] and subsequent FoodCHI symposium [14], our
broad aim is to help nurture the existing research into
everyday digital food cultures and develop a strong
community of HFI scholars. Our workshop contributes
to the nascent HFI research and related HCI inquiries
into data-driven health and 'green' lifestyles. We invite
interdisciplinary contributions from researchers,
designers, food scientists and other practitioners
interested in working towards a complex framework for
future HFI research. The organizers themselves have
very diverse practical and theoretical experiences with
the above areas of digital food practices, which will help
guide the workshop activities and also drive the
participants' selection process.
Workshop Themes
The workshop themes reflect on implications of digital
technology utilized for everyday food practices and
outline related design challenges. The themes cover
(but are not limited to) the following areas:
1. Personal implications
What are the impacts of digital technology on user's
food-related literacy? How is digital technology utilized
in health and diet self-experimentation? How does
technology affect user's emotional relationship with
food and eating? How can we design to best support
the food-related health and wellbeing of individuals and
communities?
2. Social and cultural implications
What changes does technology provide to user's social
life and commensality experiences? How does
technology affect traditional food practices and culinary
techniques? How can we include traditional food
knowledge (e.g., fermentation practices) to embrace
culturally robust digital food designs? What are the best
methods for co-designing technology, which reflects
community needs while embracing individual diversity?
3. Policy implications
What kind of data is produced and shared via digital
food technology, by whom, and for what ends? Which
stakeholders are involved and who is excluded from
digital food practices? What are the existing and
potential uses of digital technology for food activism?
How can design support safe exchanges of personal
food-related data?
4. Environmental implications
To what extent can digital technology support
sustainable food practices? What are the opportunities
of digital technology in advancing user's environmental
consciousness? How can we design for playful, but also
critical user engagement with sustainable food

practices?
Pre-Workshop Plans
We will ask the potential participants to submit a 2-
page position paper in CHI EA format, directly or
indirectly addressing the workshop themes. Participants
will also be encouraged to bring a working prototype of
their digital food designs, if possible. All accepted
papers will be placed on the workshop website
(http://datamaterialities.org/chi2018workshop.html)
along with other works related to workshop themes. We
will promote the workshop through personal
connections, social media, HCI mailing lists, the
workshop website, and other relevant channels. We
expect to host up to 20 participants.
Workshop Structure And Activities
This full-day workshop will involve a mix of
presentations of participants' HFI research followed by
group discussions and playful prototyping of various
food-tech designs and scenarios. The workshop is
broken into six main sessions:
Session 1 (9am-9:15): We will start by introducing
the workshop themes and agenda for the day.
Session 2 (9:15-11:15): Participants will give short
five minutes presentations of their proposals, followed
by a group discussion on their perspectives on the
crossing of food and technology.
Session 3 (11:15 - 12pm): Presentations will be
followed by a three-minute speed-date session, in
which all participants will talk to each other in pairs,
giving them the opportunity not only to get to know
each other but also to discuss the topics raised in their
presentations.
Session 4 (12-1pm): Following on from the speed
dating, we will have lunch involving various playful,
participatory activities around food. Workshop
participants will engage in playful interaction with
playful food and technology props brought by
organizers. The idea behind this activity is to prompt
discussions by taking inspiration from mundane food
activities and shared mealtimes.
Session 5 (1-4pm): Post lunch, we will continue with
small-group activities comprising of scenarios and
hands-on prototyping that will be navigated by specially
designed Digital Food Cards.1
The card deck outlines 23 existing as well as
anticipated speculative food-tech practices ranging
from Urban Foraging, Gut Gardening and Food
Gadgeteering to more radical envisionments of food
routines adopted by Turing Foodies, Drone Hunters and
DNA Diet Fatalists. Instead of suggesting any answers
or solutions, the cards raise questions and provoke the
players to speculate: What changes does digital
technology afford to our everyday food experiences?
What opportunities and frictions would technology pose
to future food lifestyles? What are the present and
near-future Datavore's dilemmas? Would Turing
Foodies trust each other? Would Gut Gardener date a
Food Psychonaut? Where would a Food NeoPunker and
Foodcaster go for a Friday night dinner?
Inspired by a similar card technique used by Vines et
al. [22] we hope this ambiguity will provoke playful
participant engagement as well as critical reasoning
about existing and near-future digital food lifestyles.
Participants working in groups will map selected cards
on the four main workshop themes and discuss related
opportunities and limitations. Each group will be invited
to create scenarios addressing the outlined issues and
1 http://materie.me/digifood

design 'digital food prototypes' to embody the scenarios
in actual (or even edible) form. Food and technology
materials for prototyping will be provided by workshop
organizers; participants will be invited to bring
prototypes and demos of their own digital food designs.
Session 6 (4-6pm): We will ask every group to
showcase their prototypes and scenarios and outline
the design approaches that they have taken. The
workshop will be wrapped-up by summarizing
preliminary results related to the discussed issues and
ideas.
Figure 1: Digital Food Cards
Figure 2: Digital Food Cards
Post-Workshop Plans
All accepted submissions would be included in the
dedicated workshop proceedings, published as a
technical report and placed on the workshop’s website.
The website will summarize outcomes of the workshop
and provide a space for ongoing discussion and sharing
of resources even after the workshop concludes. This
will comprise of scenarios, prototypes, and other media
content created during the workshop to be archived on
the website. To document and share the workshop
activities in near-real-time, we will use standard social
media tools (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.). The
workshop outcomes will be further disseminated among
wider audience via a CHI poster presentation. We will

also invite selected participants to contribute towards a
special issue on digital food cultures in TOCHI or IJHCS.
Organizers
Markéta Dolejšová (the primary contact person for
this workshop) is a Ph.D. candidate at the National
University of Singapore focusing on socio-technical
contexts of digital food lifestyles. Her practice-based
research refers to Speculative and Critical Design
methodologies that she extends into participatory
public engagement events (http://materie.me).
Rohit Ashok Khot is a VC Postdoctoral fellow in the
Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University. Rohit
investigates new playful ways of enriching our
interactions and association with data using
technologies like food printing
(http://datamaterialities.org).
Hilary Davis is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre
for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology.
Her work investigates the role digital technologies play
in people’s work, social activities and home lives. She is
interested in how digital cookbooks, and digital
technologies generally, might impact on
intergenerational familial relationships at mealtimes
(http://hilaryjdavis.com/).
Hasan Shahid Ferdous is a research fellow in the
Microsoft Research Centre for Social Natural User
Interface at University of Melbourne, Australia. His
current research focuses on dining experiences and the
sociality and interaction among the family members in
the shared family space (http://www.hsferdous.com/).
Andrew Quitmeyer is a Professor at the National
University of Singapore. He researches ways to design
digital media in natural environments. He is also a
proponent of exploring novel food technologies
including digitally enhanced foods and new forms of
entomophagy.
Call For Participation
Technology design is increasingly contributing to
people's everyday food lifestyles and offers promising
yet debatable food futures. Diet-tracking devices, food
sharing apps, 'smart' kitchenware and other food-tech
create both opportunities and risks related to users
health, food literacy, and social life. This workshop
addresses present and near-future digital food
controversies and seeks to extend the body of Human-
Food Interaction (HFI) research. We invite researchers
interested in HFI issues to submit position papers
reflecting on food-tech implications in following areas:
1. Personal implications
What are the impacts of digital technology on user's
food-related literacy? How can we design to support
individual’s health and well being?
2. Social and cultural implications
What changes does technology provide to user's social
life and commensality experiences? How can we design
to reflect community needs while embracing individual
diversity?
3. Policy implications
What kind of data is produced and shared via digital
food technology, by whom, and for what ends? How
can design support safe exchanges of personal food-
related data?
4. Environmental implications
To what extent can digital technology support
sustainable food practices? How can we design for
playful, but also critical user engagement with
sustainable food practices?

More info:
http://datamaterialities.org/chi2018workshop.html
Proposals (max 2p in CHI EA sent to
info[at]datamaterialities.org) will be selected based on
originality and relevance to workshop themes. The
workshop activities will comprise of scenarios and food-
tech prototyping navigated by bespoke Digital Food
Cards. Accepted participants will be asked to contribute
towards a special issue on digital food in TOCHI or
IJHCS. At least one author of each accepted paper must
attend the workshop.
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