Gummy's Way Out -- a Tangible Interactive Narrative with Food and the Diegetic Body

TL;DR

This paper presents Gummy's Way Out, an innovative tangible interactive narrative where users eat food items to influence a character's journey inside a diegetic body, fostering reflection on bodily impact.

Contribution

It introduces a novel food-based tangible narrative experience and discusses design considerations for diegetic body interactions in interactive food narratives.

Findings

Preliminary user study results indicate engaging and reflective experiences.

Design considerations highlight the importance of sensory and emotional food properties.

The experience encourages awareness of bodily impact through interactive storytelling.

Abstract

There is growing interest in designing playful interactions with food, but food based tangible interactive narratives have received less attention. We introduce Gummy's Way Out, an interactive tangible narrative experience where interactors eat a gummy bear and help him find his way out of their bodies by eating various food items. By consuming different things, the interactor either helps or hinders the gummy bear's journey through an imagined Diegetic body that overlaps with their own. Interactors are endowed with the gummy bear's well-being and are also encouraged to reflect on how their actions can impact their Lived body. We present preliminary results of a user study and design considerations on how to design for the diegetic body in interactive food based narrative experiences. We recommend leveraging the sensory and emotional properties of food to create a visceral narrative experience.