Multimodal Interactive Dining with the Sensory Interactive Table: Two Use Cases

This paper presents two use cases for a new multimodal interactive instrument: the Sensory Interactive Table. The Sensory Interactive Table is an instrumented, interactive dining table, that measures eating behavior - through the use of embedded load cells - and interacts with diners - through the use of embedded LEDs. The table opens up new ways of exploring the social dynamics of eating. The two use cases describe explorations of the design space of the Sensory Interactive Table in the context of the social space of eating. The first use case details the process of co-designing and evaluating applications to stimulate children to eat more vegetables. The second use case presents the process of designing and evaluating applications to stimulate young adults to reduce their eating speed in a social setting. The results show the broad potential of the design space of the table across user groups, types of interactions, as well as the social space of eating.