“Arm-a-Dine”: towards understanding the design of playful embodied eating experiences

There is an increasing trend in HCI on studying human-food interaction, however, we find that most work so far seems to focus on what happens to the food before and during eating, i.e. the preparation and consumption stage. In contrast, there is a limited understanding and exploration around using interactive technology to support the embodied plate-to-mouth movement of food during consumption, which we aim to explore through a playful design in a social eating context. We present "Arm-A-Dine", an augmented social eating system that uses wearable robotic arms attached to diners’ bodies for eating and feeding food. Extending the work to a social setting, "Arm-A-Dine" is networked so that a person’s third arm is controlled by the affective responses of his/her dining partner. From the study of "Arm-A-Dine" with 12 players, we articulate three design themes: Reduce bodily control during eating; Encourage savoring by drawing attention to sensory aspects during eating; and Encourage crossmodal sharing during eating to assist game designers and food practitioners in creating playful social eating experiences. We hope that our work inspires further explorations around food and play that consider all eating stages, ultimately contributing to our understanding of playful human-food interaction.