AAD012 Social Eating

Firstly, I made a spider diagram to explore social eating and what that means to me.

I automatically think of making new friends and the new culture of social media and dating apps etc. and how that could tie into eating or the eating world. I used a sort of Venn diagram to flesh out these two separate ideas and help determine where they could meet.

I came upon the idea of making a device that combines social/dating technology with the dining experience. I wanted to do so however, without forcing us to engage with our mobile phones as I feel that this would be a detriment to the eating experience. I used a mood board as shown below to give me inspiration and depict the colours and imagery the product will embody.

Below is my first and only sketch of the device as it is quite a simple yet stylish idea if i do say so myself. The idea is that you would place this Beacon, which happens to be its name, next to you while you were out eating or drinking coffee etc. You can change the colour that the device would display via ambient LED powered lighting and the colour relates to your openness to being approached, wether for friendly or romantic purposes. The device can also be worn by utilising a magnet back. The device can also be tapped by a smartphone and this will automatically bring up the persons social media and/or dating info.

Here is an example of what the lighting colours would be and their meanings.

It may seem unnecessary to have colours for when one is not looking to talk, but as mentioned before a device being displayed can be tapped with a phone to reveal their info. I then moved onto making a model to visualise the product in 3D, as below.

Materials used:

I would like to use sustainable plastic and rubber for the body and ethically chosen batteries and LEDs to implement the technology. Care would also be taken to ensure that the best practises and safeguards would be in place for the app and social side of this product.

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