pHotOluck: a home-use table-ware to vitalise mealtime communications by projecting photos onto dishes

In this paper, we propose "pHotOluck" (a word coined by mixing "potluck" and "photo"), which is a novel tableware system for vitalizing mealtime communication by projecting photos taken by people who have a meal together onto special dishes. We conducted several experiments to investigate people's behaviors and communications, comparing pHotOluck with an ordinary photo viewing system that displays photos on a normal LCD PC display and with printed photos. The results of the experiments showed that pHotOluck could vitalize mealtime communications and offered everyone on equal chance to initiate communication although, compared to a normal photo viewing system and printed photos, pHotOluck is not so good as a photoviewer.