The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality
Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices
Khawla Alhasan (University of Kent)
Eleonora Ceccaldi (University of Genoa)
Alexandra Covaci (University of Kent)
Maurizio Mancini (Sapienza University of Rome)
Ferran Altarriba Bertran (University of Girona)
Gijs Huisman (TU Delft - Human Technology Relations)
Mailin Lemke (TU Delft - Form and Experience)
Chee Siang Ang (University of Kent)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people leverage technology to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging while eating. In this paper, we look at digital commensality and we explore its inherent playful potential with the aim to inspire the design of engaging technologies that can support, enhance and augment this form of interaction. For this, we used a situated play design approach to document and analyze the behavior of 36 people (including pairs of friends and strangers) sharing meals online. Our analysis surfaced a set of play potentials of remote dining - i.e., playful things people already do and enjoy spontaneously while sharing meals online. We present those play potentials as inspirational material: they can motivate and enrich the design of future digital commensality technologies by responding to people's desire for playful and social interaction with, through, and around food.