Philip Weber

Virtual co-cooking gained visibility during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the increasing use of communication technology for social activities. However, available videoconferencing platforms are not well designed to support virtual co-cooking. Therefore, we explored this practice and the underlying design space and derived guidelines for current videoconferencing interfaces to better meet virtual cook-along enthusiasts' needs. For this, we first observed three remote cook-along sessions and then conducted semi-structured interviews, resulting in 12 requirements and 4 requirements themes culminating in 20 features divided into four dimensions: planning, enabling, co-presence, and food interaction. In the second phase, each feature was evaluated by 14 participants using the Kano questionnaire, followed by structured interviews. This resulted in six design implications related to automation, hands-free interactions, privacy, preserving memories, eliminating stress, and encouraging conjoint activities. This research provides insights and perspectives on the evolving landscape of technology-mediated social interactions and collaborative practices, and how to design for them.

A large number of mobile apps support the sustainable use of food. These apps often use playful elements to enhance the user experience and promote their long-term use. However, we know little about which conceptual aspects of gamification and which gamified elements are actually used in the context of sustainable food apps. Therefore, in this paper, we analyse 76 mobile apps from the Google Play Store found with the term ‘sustainable food’ of which we analyse 27 apps in detail using the Gameful Design Heuristics. Our analysis uncovers a low average heuristics score and an unbalanced usage of subheuristics and heuristic categories. Additionally, gamification is unevenly distributed among food themes and sustainability categories. This study’s results contribute to the research on commercial gamified apps related to sustainability and food. Thus, this paper contributes to gamification design by identifying design opportunities that serve as interesting starting points for future work.

Article Special issue on “conversational agents” – Editorial was published on March 16, 2023 in the journal i-com (volume 0, issue 0).

3D printers are no longer found only in industry, universities or makerspaces but now are increasingly used in domestic settings. Personal fabrication will increase in the coming years, and 3D printing will play an important role in this process. Due to technology and price development, 3D printers are becoming established among casual users at home. However, there are still many hurdles in the use of 3D printers that interfere with their appropriation in everyday life. In this paper, we investigate how chatbots can overcome these hurdles and support onboarding to 3D printing. Furthermore, we explore how chatbots can be used as a human–machine interface and facilitate interaction with 3D printers for both novice and expert users. In a research-through-design approach, we have created a fully functional chatbot that introduces users to 3D printing and helps them perform typical tasks when operating 3D printers.

In recent years, emerging approaches to chatbot-guided food coaching and dietary management, while innovative and promising in nature, have often lacked long-term studies. Therefore, with this work, we pursued a participatory approach within a design case study to the co-design and development of a nutrition chatbot for elderly people. Overall, 15 participants were directly involved in the study, of which 12 participated in the initial co-design phase, seven in the first real-world evaluation study over four weeks, and three in the second evaluation study over seven weeks. We contribute to the fields of Human-Computer Interaction by showing how the long-term use of such a chatbot in the area of nutrition looks like, which design implications arise for the development of nutrition chatbots, and how a participatory design approach can be realized to design, evaluate and develop nutrition chatbots.

There has been recent criticism from researchers towards simple replication of traditional role models in the design of virtual agents and robots, and a call for new forms of interaction and communication with technology. By exploring the field of Human-Food interaction (HFI) – a sub-area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) which aims to investigate the diversity of ways people interact with food – we therefore specifically examine the design space of edible anthropomorphic virtual agents (EAVAs). To understand human-to-food interactive communication, we conducted an interview study with 19 participants, followed by a co-design workshop on the design of conversational agents for personified food. Based on the results, we implemented a prototype called FoodChattAR that employs augmented reality and chatbots to interact and communicate with food. Our evaluation with 21 participants shows that FoodChattAR turns eating into fun, while at the same time the food conveys relevant societal facts about itself. We contribute to the field of HCI by introducing EAVAs as a novel human-to-food interaction.