Food Talks: Visual and Interaction Principles for Representing Environmental and Nutritional Food Information in Augmented Reality

Abstract

This user-centered design research project aimed to investigate visual and interaction principles for augmented reality (AR) in the context of environmental and nutritional food labelling. Nutritional information on existing food labels is often misunderstood and environmental information is seldom depicted, despite consumer demand. The project explored the potential of AR in this context with a two-phase process. Phase 1 aimed to engage large audiences in public spaces using a stand-alone AR device showing environmental information only. This allowed design strategies to be tested. Phase 2 addressed personalised information, combining nutritional and environmental data with smartphone AR. Here we integrated design learnings from Phase 1 and then focused on assessing the benefits of AR. A betweensubjects study with 84 participants compared two-versions of the smartphone application; one version showed the information with AR and the other showed the same information with a static page. Results showed that participants using the AR version learned more about food products than those using the static version. In addition, the AR version matched the high scores of the static version with regards to usability (SUS score of 86) and aesthetics (VisAWI score of 5.9), despite technical limitations of AR. This work reveals that AR can be a credible medium in the food industry and provides visual and interaction design learnings to inform designers in the industry.

Augmented Reality in Food Promotion and Analysis: Review and Potentials

“…The inclusion stopped when no more relevant content was present in the results. The outcome was 19 publications with actual applications [25,27,28,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], and reviewing references to existing applications [3,18,19,22,26,29,39]. It became obvious that most of the actual applications from research resources are limited and rather outdated [31,32,34,35,37].…”

A Study on Immersion and Intention to Pay in AR Broadcasting: Validating and Expanding the Hedonic Motivation System Adoption Mode

“…The perceptual advantages and visual appeal of AR significantly impact user satisfaction with AR [98]. Despite existing technological limitations, high scores in usability and aesthetics attest to this fact [99]. The role of aesthetics in AR extends beyond user satisfaction and encompasses various domains.…”