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Commensality or Reverie in Eating? Exploring the Solo Dining Experience

Published: 07 November 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Commensality, the act of eating together, is commonly associated with many benefits. Dining solo, in contrast, is frequently connected to adverse effects on a person. There is a growing interest in human-computer interaction (HCI) and design in how innovations can enhance eating experiences by, for example, facilitating commensality. The steadily growing number of people eating alone and the associated risks beg the question of how HCI and design could contribute to and improve the solo dining experience and whether or not mimicking or facilitating commensality is what solo diners want. This two-phased study reports on the context exploration of the multimodal solitary dining experience. In the first phase, we scoped the literature describing the benefits and drawbacks of solo dining and commensality. For the second phase, a digital food diary was developed and completed by six solo diners to collect further insights and user requirements. Photos and annotations collected as part of the food diary were analyzed using content analysis. The results indicate several advantages of eating alone, including feeling relaxed, perceiving solo dining as a moment of self-pampering, and appreciating the cooking experience. Overall, it seems that solo dining is not merely a lack of commensality, but a unique experience in and of itself, where people seem to strive towards finding reverie in eating.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ICMI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
    November 2022
    830 pages
    ISBN:9781450393904
    DOI:10.1145/3536221
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial International 4.0 License.

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    Published: 07 November 2022

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    Author Tags

    1. commensality
    2. eating experience
    3. food diary
    4. scoping review
    5. solo dining

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    • (2024)DishAgent: Enhancing Dining Experiences through LLM-Based Smart DishesAdjunct Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3672539.3686755(1-4)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
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