So, the person in the top left collects objects of value ( letters, notes, photos etc.). After a bit, they take the storage object and it’s integrated into their dining experience. Let’s say you like to read. A lot of people look at a magazine while they eat but it’s kind of hard when you don’t have a table. Why not integrate the reading right into your meal? One more idea, let’s say someone likes to garden, why not let them tend their mini garden while eating food?

So this considering the reading idea a little more. The eating surface performs like an analogue laptop. Maybe it fits onto existing surfaces?

What if this eating surface is split into two pieces and the two people each get one piece. These pieces function alone in partnership your chair. However, when you get together with your pal, you put the pieces together for a proper table. Also, the bottom right, I was thinking what it would be like to have a flower stuck in, or growing out of your fork…that’d be cool.

02) significance
The collective eating experience is emotionally significant and acts as a medium for important interaction. Eating alone is physically and emotionally cumbersome and turns the activity into a soulless and robotic process.

03) opportunity
Social and living conditions often change as we grow older. These new conditions haven’t been addressed in the context of moving from the collective to solitary dining experience.

04) general objective
Bring back the emotional and physical affordances of dining collectively to dining alone.

05) specific objective
• Makes individual dining without a designated dining space more sanitary and less physically awkward.
• Makes individual dining more enjoyable
• Provide an emotional experience.
• Encourages collective dining.

06) Project attributes or requirements
• do-able within a few months
• Considers peoples needs of feedback, and interaction from a third party while performing basic or repetitive actions.

Here is a sketch of a scenario relevant to my opportunity. Individuals at Parkview grew up in the time of family dinners and just large families in general. As they aged, their family slowly disappeared from their immediate lives. Also, Parkview apartments are small and don’t have dining areas. In sum, eating alone in your living room is no fun.

So when you’re alone you might watch some TV, stair at the fish on the table and read the cereal box, or listen to music and browse the web. In all these circumstances, the food isn’t the main focus.

After conducting more field research we began layering data on top of the map to organize what we were observing and what people were saying. This is an example layer from an interview we had with Ella.

Here is an image of the file with three of our interview layers displayed. While not practical for mining information out of the diagram, I find the layers of data particularly beautiful just because they say more powerfully “this is what you know about these people, a complex web of quotes and your thoughts”. I don’t know, I just think that’s beautiful.

Here is a video of what Ella has to say.

Ella Stewart from Sam Cox on Vimeo.

The above diagram was created in response to an assignment to create an “affinity diagram”. The information is data collected from research into the topic of “aging” and a class brainstorm of things that drive and motivate people.