Note: This article was co-authored by Aswati Panicker, Kavya Basu, and Christina Chung and is a summary of our research paper “Changing Roles and Contexts: Symbolic Interactionism in the Sharing of Food and Eating Practices between Remote, Intergenerational Family Members”. This work will be presented at the upcoming CSCW 2020 conference.

Many adults live alone or apart from their families and talk about their eating experiences with each other to stay in touch. How can we leverage conversations about food to keep long-distance family members connected?

As family members increasingly live apart from each other — with 60% of adults living away from their parents — there is a growing interest in designing technologies to support long-distance communication. Additionally, food and eating habits are a frequent topic of communication amongst family members. We wanted to…