EdiPulse: Supporting Physical Activity with Chocolate Printed Messages

Abstract

Designing to support physical activity is a growing field of interest in interaction design. However, existing explorations in this area have mostly focused on using screens to graphically report physical activity data such as heart rate. The use of edible mediums such as 3D printed food for representing such data opens up new possibilities and challenges to push the field forward. Supporting this, we present EdiPulse that 3D prints in chocolates, personalized cheerful messages and emoticons, displaying heart rate data from physical activity session. By varying the thickness of the printed letters and emoticons, the system also supports abstract visualization of the heart rate data, while the printed chocolate incentivizes participation in physical activity. Ultimately, with this work, we aim to inspire and guide design thinking on food printing and edible quantified self representations, which we believe opens up new interaction possibilities to support the physical activity experience.