Rethinking Domestic Food Consumption through a Multi-modal Open Pantry

Abstract

The fast-paced lifestyle and the conveniences of urban food storage contribute to an increase in domestic food waste, wherein we end up not consuming everything that we buy. This issue has been tackled within HCI through different awareness tools; however, the design of domestic food storage in itself has received limited attention from designers. We present FoodChestra, a smart open pantry that displays perishable food items in shared households. FoodChestra supports multimodal interactions and offers timely feedback to help users understand and reflect on their shared shopping and eating practices. In this pictorial, we present the key design decisions that were undertaken to develop the five main components of FoodChestra. Through this work, we aim to inspire new design thinking for reimagining the food storage systems of urban households that can encourage people to reflect on their food consumption practices.