The Interactive Dining Table

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). CHI’13, April 27 – May 2, 2013, Paris, France. ACM 978-1-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/XX. Abstract Large-scale interactive surfaces are nearly ubiquitous in research labs and showrooms around the world today. However, unlike other recent interaction technologies such as smartphones, they have not yet found their way into people’s everyday lives. Possible reasons include high cost as well as a lack of suitable applications. In this paper, we present our prototypical implementation of a low-cost, unobtrusive interactive surface, integrated with the dining table in a real-world living room. To motivate our approach, we explore three scenarios highlighting potential applications for our system and present their prototypical implementations. In the first scenario, we extend regular board games with interactive components without sacrificing their unique haptic experience. In the second scenario, we investigate ambient notifications which provide a method for delivering information to the users subconsciously. Finally, we introduce and explore the concept of augmented dining, in which the appearance of food placed on the table is augmented or modified through the system.