Designing
Hearty
Adventures in
Food &
Play!
HAFP Research Lab was born in 2020 to offer a glimpse of a possible ubiquitous future where food and technology could converge, leading to new possibilities of interacting with food.
Mission Statement
Food has always played a crucial role in the lives of all living bodies, but its importance is now more crucial than ever, as our contemporary concerns expand with technological, environmental, and social disruptions, ranging from food security to agricultural sustainability to rising obesity and diminishing commensality.
In these challenging and interesting times, there is certainly plenty of onus to think and reflect before designing technology-mediated ubiquitous food future and shape a better relationship with our environment and our own humanity.
This discourse not only requires serious/careful academic explorations and discussions but also a playful lightness; one that sees what we currently have as only a shadow of what we could imagine.
Through the creative convergence of design, technology, and play, we aim to disrupt rudimentary thinking around food and wellbeing with the hope to inspire academia and industry to newer technological possibilities of carefully crafted foodscapes within the expanding Human-Food Interaction (Khot & Mueller 2019) space.
What we do
Core Research Areas
At the heart of HAFP are the following core areas of investigation.
- Mindful eating
- Human-Food Interaction
- Digital Commensality
- Food Provenence
- Biophillia
- Digestive and Gustatory Interfaces
- Tangible and Embodied Interactions
- Playful design
- Food Printing
- Skin interfaces
- Digital Health
- Mixed Reality (AR, VR, MR)
We commit ourselves to four principles that guide our collaborative work.
Hearty.
We design solutions that appeal to the heart becuase we believe "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Courtesy: The little prince.
Adventurous.
Great things are achieved only when we dream and dream big, dream adventureous. We are interested in redefining future and future of our interactions with food. Hence we value provocations, speculations and emerging ideas that challenge the status quo and offer a glimpse of a preferred future.
Foodie.
We are all foodie, so no second guessing that food is also our favorite research topic. We also make sure that the pleasures of food and eating are not compromised in our pursuits.
Playful.
Play is at the core of our design and critical to any interaction. We believe through play, we learn and we engage. Play makes us Humane.
Meet our creative minds
Collaboration is at the heart of what we do and thanks to our supportive and passionate team, working together comes naturally.
Dr. Rohit Ashok Khot
Director
Dr. Deepti Aggarwal
Digital Health
Jung-Ying (Lois) Yi
Biophillia
Dr. Jessica Danaher
Personalised Nutrition
Jason Ng
Skin Interfaces
Nandini Pasumarthy
Gut Interactions
Yi Ling (Ellie) Tai
Dining Play
Yan Wang
Gustasonics
Jui Deepak Apte
Augmented Spaces
Priti Bangal
Animal Behavior
