A Spoon With an Added Nudge for Mindful Eating

SWAN

SWAN is the world’s first augmented spoon that encourages people to pay more attention to their food and eat mindfully. SWAN keeps track of an individual’s gaze during mealtime and makes three moves based on how much attention is given to the food. The first move is “Redirect” which draws diners’ attention towards food through rapid movements; the second is “Drop”, a motion that drops food from the spoon and the third is “Refuse” where SWAN leans back and refuses to pick up the food. Through three moves, SWAN offers playful ways in which mindfulness can be guided during mealtime.

The design of SWAN is grounded in years of research in food psychology and sociology. Research highlights that food-related decisions are made instantaneously and are affected by the social and emotional context and surroundings. By playfully changing the way in which people understand their eating habits and its consequence, SWAN facilitates change in those momentary decisions. Such continuous and real-time exposure to triggering cues of eating behaviours can help to gradually eliminate unhealthy eating activities.

SWAN is playfully provocative and contextually appropriate. Instead of denying the presence of media during eating, it reconfigures and repurposes their use towards instilling mindfulness in eating. The software interface of SWAN is built using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms while the hardware part uses food-grade material in its composition.