Facilitating Mindful Eating with a Voice Assistant

Abstract

In our busy lives, meals are being squeezed into shorter times, or fit into multitasking routines of watching videos and scrolling through social media. This can lead to eating quickly without considering the food choices and overeating. Mindful eating has been promoted as an effective method to combat mindless eating with various tools available to facilitate mindfulness practices. However, the use of voice assistants to facilitate mindful eating is rather limited. We developed a voice assistant to facilitate mindful eating activities and conducted a field study with four participants over six days. We examined how the social role of the voice assistant, acting as a friend or a counselor, affects mindful eating experiences. The results suggest that voice assistants can assist users in mindful eating, however, participants preferred the friend version of the voice assistant. Implications for the design of voice assistants for mindfulness activities are provided.