Domestic food and sustainable design: a study of university student cooking and its impacts

  • Authors:
  • Adrian K. Clear;Mike Hazas;Janine Morley;Adrian Friday;Oliver Bates

  • Affiliations:
  • Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK;Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK;Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK;Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK;Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

In four university student kitchens over twenty-one days, we captured participants' food preparation activity, quantified the greenhouse gas emissions and direct energy connected to the food and cooking, and talked to participants about their food practices. Grounded in this uniquely detailed micro-account, our findings inform sustainable design for cooking and eating at home and quantify the potential impacts. We outline the relation of the impacts to our participants' approaches to everyday food preparation, the organisation of their time, and the role of social meals. Our technique allows evaluation of opportunities for sustainable intervention design: at the appliance, in the digitally-mediated organisation of meals and inventory management, and more broadly in reflecting upon and reshaping diet.