Leonardo Bonanni

Don’t you hate dishes? The DishMaker is a new kind of appliance that makes cups, bowls and plates on demand and recycles them when you’re done. Before dinner, you simply program the Dishmaker and in less than ten minutes, it stamps out all of the dishes for a family of four. After you’ve finished eating, simply return the dishes to the Dishmaker where they are flattened for storage. The dishwasher-sized device takes advantage of a little-known property of acrylic to recycle a single dish one thousand times with less energy than it takes to make a single ceramic dish.

CHI 2005 | CNN | Splendid Table (NPR) |
Wired News

in MIT’s kitchen of the future (counterintelligence) Chia-Hsun Lee and I looked at novel ways to present information. After many tries, it turned out that nobody wants a kitchen that makes cooking more efficient, but, on the other hand, everybody likes new interfaces that make the kitchen more fun. here is the evolution of the research (in papers):

The Kitchen as a Graphical User Interface: Everyday objects can become computer interfaces by the overlay of digital information. This paper describes scenarios and implementations in which imagery is digitally painted on the objects and spaces of a kitchen. Five augmented physical interfaces were designed to orient and inform people in the tasks of cleaning, cooking, and accessing information: Information Table, Information Annotation of Kitchen, HeatSink, Spatial Definition, and Social Floor. Together, these interfaces augment the entire room into a single graphical user interface.

A Framework for Designing Intelligent Task-Oriented Augmented Reality User Interfaces: A task-oriented space can benefit from an augmented reality
interface that layers the existing tools and surfaces with useful information to make cooking more easy, safe and efficient. To serve experienced users as well as novices, augmented reality interfaces need to adapt modalities to the user’s expertise and allow for multiple ways to perform tasks. We present a framework for designing an intelligent user interface that informs and choreographs multiple tasks in a single space according to a model of tasks and users. A residential kitchen has been outfitted with systems to gather data from tools and surfaces and project multi-modal interfaces back onto the tools and surfaces themselves. Based on user evaluations of this augmented reality kitchen, we propose a system to tailor information modalities based on the spatial and temporal qualities of the task, and the expertise, location and progress of the user. The intelligent augmented reality user interface choreographs multiple tasks in the same space at the same time.

Attention-Based Design of Augmented Reality InterfacesThe objects and surfaces of a task-based environment can be layered with digital interfaces to make them easier and safer to use. Once information can be projected anywhere in the space, it becomes crucial to design the information to make optimal use of users’ attention. We have prototyped and evaluated a real-world augmented reality kitchen where user-centered interfaces and displays can be projected anywhere in the space to improve its usability. The augmented environment is designed to support the activities of a variety of people in diverse kitchen environments. This paper presents five intelligent kitchen systems that layer useful interfaces onto the refrigerator, range, cabinets, countertops and sink. The interface design is driven by
human factors, especially attention theory and user evaluations. By projecting interfaces where they require the least cognitive load, we hope to improve the
performance and confidence of users. The design employs cueing and search principles from attention theory. We present the results of pilot studies and future directions for our work.

Cooking with the Elements : The glut of information produced by ubiquitous computing in augmented reality environments requires that the resulting information displays be tailored to the attention of users and mapped directly to the objects and surfaces of the space. This paper proposes a method for designing and implementing ambient information displays combining ambient displays and augmented reality to produce useful intuitive interfaces that are concretely mapped to architectural spaces for the purposes of expanding and enriching the quality and sensuality of user experience.