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The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices

Alhasan, Khawla, Ceccaldi, Eleonora, Covaci, Alexandra, Mancini, Maurizio, Altarriba Bertran, Ferran, Huisman, Gijs, Lemke, Mailin, Ang, Chee Siang (2022) The Playful Potential of Digital Commensality: Learning from Spontaneous Playful Remote Dining Practices. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 6 (CHI PL). Article Number 254. ISSN 2573-0142. (doi:10.1145/3549517) (KAR id:98093)

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.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1145/3549517
Additional information: ** From Crossref journal articles via Jisc Publications Router ** History: ppub 25-10-2022; issued 25-10-2022; epub 31-10-2022.
Uncontrolled keywords: Interaction design, playfulness, computer mediated communication, empirical study
Subjects: T Technology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Engineering and Digital Arts
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
SWORD Depositor: JISC Publications Router
Depositing User: JISC Publications Router
Date Deposited: 29 Nov 2022 16:22 UTC
Last Modified: 30 Nov 2022 13:01 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/98093 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Alhasan, Khawla.

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Covaci, Alexandra.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3205-2273
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Ang, Chee Siang.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1109-9689
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