The Eating Flow
Visualizing Eating Manners
From a fun idea of finding out who eats all the food to a scientific tool of eating behaviorism.
Idea&Coding:
James Ruan
James Ruan
Render:
Jinzi Wei
Jinzi Wei
Visual:
Xiaoyao Ma
Xiaoyao Ma
Inspiration
My inspiration came from our daily lives as Asians. When we eat together and share food, we always find that someone eats very fast while some eat very slowly. The fast eater can eat up most of the meal. Besides, using chopsticks more than forks may also result in a more distinctive hand movement.
This observation made me think it would be interesting to study and visualize our hand movement when eating and use this pattern for further related studies, like nutrition studies.
Solution Architecture & Programming
Eating Behaviorism
The color band starts with the red span and ends with the dark blue one. The larger/broader/taller the band is, the faster the eater’s hand moves. Accordingly, we could see three typical eating behaviors: constant speed, low-to-fast, and fast-to-low. We could simultaneously monitor users’ hand movements to analyze their eating behaviors, which they may never realize.
Next Step
A possible future application is for eating behaviorism analysis. By visualizing and stacking eating movements, every kind of eater should have their own eating patterns. The colors and the width of the shapes all indicate their eating features that could possibly affect their eating and, consequently, digestion and nutrition.