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Negotiating food waste: Using a practice lens to inform design

Published: 27 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Ecological sustainability is becoming of increasing concern to the HCI community, though little focus has been given yet to issues around food waste. Given the environmental impact of food waste, there is potential to make a significant difference. To understand everyday domestic practices around food and waste, we took a “practice” lens and carried out a study in 14 households that involved interviews, in-home tours and, in five of the households, a FridgeCam technology probe. The analysis highlights that food waste is the unintended result of multiple moments of consumption dispersed in space and time across other integrated practices such as shopping and cooking, which are themselves embedded in broader contextual factors and values. We highlight the importance of respecting the complex negotiations that people make within given structural conditions and competing values and practices, and suggest design strategies to support dispersed as well as integrated food practices, rather than focusing on waste itself.

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    Published In

    cover image ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
    ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction  Volume 20, Issue 2
    May 2013
    111 pages
    ISSN:1073-0516
    EISSN:1557-7325
    DOI:10.1145/2463579
    Issue’s Table of Contents
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Publication History

    Published: 27 May 2013
    Accepted: 01 December 2012
    Revised: 01 December 2012
    Received: 01 April 2012
    Published in TOCHI Volume 20, Issue 2

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    Author Tags

    1. Everyday practice
    2. design
    3. food and waste
    4. sustainability

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