MindFull: Tableware to Manipulate Sensory Perception and Reduce Portion Sizes

Abstract

Rising obesity levels across the world are a major threat to health, well-being and the economy. Reducing the amount we eat is difficult. This is partly because consciously controlling our eating typically increases the amount we eat. The paper presents the MindFull tableware-a new design for tableware to help people to reduce portion sizes effectively and unconsciously. MindFull designs exploit a range of features of our sensory perception identified from psychological research literature. Initial experiments show encouraging results for the design and suggest several directions for future development, research and applications for the design findings.