Mindful Bites
Design for Conscious Cat Feeding Experience to Prevent Cat Obesity
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Abstract
Food has a unique value in human society. As humans, we do not only fulfill our nutritional needs by food, but we also use it as a medium to reinforce our relationships. Providing food symbolizes caring loved ones, making them happy and fulfilled. When it comes to animal companionship, we as humans tend to reflect our existing caring practices to our relationships with animals. We love our companion animals. They play such a significant role in our lives. They offer us their unconditional love. So why not to make them happy with a couple of extra bites of food? In this project, we aimed to tackle one of the biggest health problems in cat companions, obesity. Unfortunately, cat obesity is primarily caused by their beloved human companions’ inconsiderate feeding habits. Caregivers harm their animals with good intentions, by overfeeding. Why do people overfeed their animals? To answer this question, we explored feeding experience from multiple perspectives i.e. behavior, practice, and interaction. Then we utilized our findings to design for a weight concerned feeding practice. Our final design concept, Mindful Bites, aims to create a conscious feeding experience to prevent overfeeding behavior in the long term. By facilitating reflection and providing information, 'Mindful Bites' targets emotional aspects of feeding experience.
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