Digital Food Habit and Addiction

Critical Design • Speculative Design  • User Research

The Background

Good food is good mood. Food is the center of everything in so many ways. Food is a community event and a bonding experience. So, food is not only for surviving, but sharing experience is also a major function for food.

In recent years, digitalization comes and penetrates quickly into our food habit, since we every consumer are today digital consumers. New technologies or platform like foodie, Foodora, Instagram and Facebook encompass our entire customer journey on food from preparing, cooking and consuming.

We eat with our eyes. Food images have a huge influence on our brain, psyche and body. Catchphrase: ‘’Camera eat first!’’ Photos between food and sensuality and added a hash-tag, where food porn embraces Internet. On Instagram, over 208 million posts have been tagged with the “food” hash-tag in 2017 since it was founded in 2010. The booming of food porn is how social media starts changing the way how we eat and our food trend. Cloud eggs, Unicorn Frappuccinos from Starbucks and avocado toast all have one thing in common: Social media made them a hit.

Besides, though sharing our food experience digitally, user can increase connection with other people and satisfy his psychological needs. It explains why the phenomenon of mukbang (eat-boardcasting) became more global interest

Topic - from Visual Hunger to Digital Food Addiction

It is unlike the traditional food addiction, it is not necessary related to the real eating. But it is rather more a hidden behavior addiction, since it is a hybrid between with social media addiction and eating virtually and visually .

Visual hunger is the start engine of digital food habit. Because our brain is always hungry. One of the brain’s key roles is to facilitate foraging and feeding. Food is one of the most effective stimuli in terms of modulating brain activity in hungry participants. There is neuro-/psychological consequences in our brains of viewing food images. And it is very similar effect to the  brain metabolism of other behavior addiction activities. Therefore, the practices of visual hunger shares similar habit loops like other addiction and habits.

Typical practices of digital food addictions include addicted to publish (active) and as well to receive (passive) food experience digitally.  Massive instagram food porn and Mukbang (eat-boardcasting) are both the examples.

Potential effects of Digital Food Addiction

Positive effects:

• Increased connection and satisfying psychological needs (digital satisfaction)
• possible new business opportunities (commercial)
• Making Food taste better (placebo effect)

negative effects:

• Triggers addiction cycle in brain
• Blocking/ worsening social relationship in reallife
• Leak personal information
• Promote food waste/unhealthy food habit

The Concept - YouEat

Regarding to the phenomenon of mukbang, YouEat is the first ever online dinning steaming service, which it serves online visual-food buffet. It is a design fiction aiming at exploring and criticizing possible futures with further development from the current digital food habit, and as a critical design about the hidden risk issue , how digital food habit obsessed distort the original food function n eating habit.

It is inspirited from the sex live steaming show platform, since food porn and porn share similar effect. A token system was applied as monetization mechanics to distinct the triggers addiction cycle of the digital food addiction.

The recommendation system is similar to the recommendation system from Tripadvisor. Recommended restaurants are required to provided better environment or service for digital eating experience. it is to point out  and criticize how digital food habit distort and twisted the social and physical fuction how eating should be

Interface of the YouEat

Explored scenarios, YouEat Recommendation System