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Buying the ‘Right’ Thing: Designing Food Recommender Systems with Critical Consumers

Published: 07 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Critical consumerism is complex as ethical values are difficult to negotiate, appropriate products are hard to find, and product information is overwhelming. Although recommender systems offer solutions to reduce such complexity, current designs are not appropriate for niche practices and use non-personalized intransparent ethics. To support critical consumption, we conducted a design case study on a personalized food recommender system. Therefore, we first conducted an empirical pre-study with 24 consumers to understand value negotiations and current practices, co-designed the recommender system, and finally evaluated it in a real-world trial with ten consumers. Our findings show how recommender systems can support the negotiation of ethical values within the context of consumption practices, reduce the complexity of finding products and stores, and strengthen consumers. In addition to providing implications for the design to support critical consumption practices, we critically reflect on the scope of such recommender systems and its appropriation.

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
        May 2021
        10862 pages
        ISBN:9781450380966
        DOI:10.1145/3411764
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        Published: 07 May 2021

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        Author Tags

        1. co-design
        2. consumer informatics
        3. critical consumerism
        4. ethics
        5. food
        6. recommender systems

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        • (2024)From Seed to Compost: A Systematic Review of the Impact of Digital Technologies Across the Community Food System LifecycleProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685396(1-17)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
        • (2024)Time and Money Matters for Sustainability: Insights on User Preferences on Renewable Energy for Electric Vehicle Charging StationsProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202410.1145/3670653.3670677(269-278)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
        • (2024)Mapping the Design Space of Teachable Social Media Feed ExperiencesProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642120(1-20)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
        • (2024)Promoting Green Fashion Consumption Through Digital Nudges in Recommender SystemsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2024.334971012(6812-6829)Online publication date: 2024
        • (2024)Towards interactive explanation-based nutrition virtual coaching systemsAutonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/s10458-023-09634-538:1Online publication date: 20-Jan-2024
        • (2023)Healthy Food Recommendations? Thanks, but No Thanks: An Explanation Interface for Food Recommendations in a Real-Life Workplace Deployment (Preprint)JMIR mHealth and uHealth10.2196/51271Online publication date: 26-Jul-2023
        • (2023)Enriching Recommender Systems Results with Data about Sustainability and Ethical Standards of Brands2023 IEEE International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT)10.1109/WI-IAT59888.2023.00037(238-242)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2023
        • (2023)A Comprehensive Survey on Artificial Intelligence Based Methods and Technologies Used to Detect Nutrition Level (Malnourishment)2023 IEEE International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology (ICCST)10.1109/ICCST59048.2023.10726846(1-6)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2023
        • (2023)Food choice and the epistemic value of the consumption of recommender systems: the case of Yuka’s perceived value in FranceBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2023.221208843:7(1381-1400)Online publication date: 10-May-2023
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