Toward Understanding Playful Beverage-based Gustosonic Experiences

Recent advances in interactive technology are being used to enrich our interactions around food and drinks. Making use of sound to enrich dining - providing "gustosonic" experiences - has recently garnered interest as an exciting area of ubiquitous computing. However, these experiences have tended to focus on eating. In response to the lack of drinking-focused experiences, we explore the combining playful design and drinking activities so as to allow users to experience playful personalized sounds via drinking through "Sonic Straws". We present the findings of an in-the-wild study that highlights how our system supported self-expression via playful drinking actions, facilitated pleasurable social drinking moments, and promoted reflection on drinking practices. We discuss the implications of this work for designers of future gustosonic experiences, including how to amplify entertainment experiences around drinking/eating, how to highlight the joy coming from multisensory experiences, and how to facilitate mindful engagement with what one drinks. Ultimately, we aim to contribute to the enrichment of dining experiences through playful design.