The Sensory Interactive Table: Exploring the Social Space of Eating

We introduce the Sensory Interactive Table: an interactive dining table based on explorations of the social space of eating, and a probe to explore the social space of eating further. We walk through our exploration of the social space of eating through the lens of a table. We highlight social aspects of eating around a table and present these through three illustrative scenarios: serving pie, sharing finger food, and synchronizing over soup. These scenarios formed the basis for our exploration of how the table might embody sensing and interacting in these situations. This effort informed our design rationale for aspects such as form, materials, modularity, and the sensing and interacting involved to shape our research probe.\r\nThe result is the Sensory Interactive Table, a dining table embedded with load cells and LEDs, just below the surface of the tabletop. 199 load cells measure aspects of eating behavior such as weight shifts over the table. 8358 LEDs afford a range of interactions with diners.\r\n