A Study of Cultural Tolerance Reference Frame for Culture-Based Design

Smart Dining Table is an ongoing project in our Interaction Design Lab. It is a table top display designed to facilitate dining process. Smart Dining Table uses touchable interface to interact with users, providing a new, interesting and efficient experience in dining process. In GuangZhou, the south city of China, Yam Cha is a traditional and local way of entertainment in which normally elders gather together with friends or relatives to have tea and snack, and most importantly, to chat. Yam Cha has a long history in China, and Guangzhou has developed its own unique "Yam Cha" culture. In this paper, we discuss about previous research we did on Yam Cha in GuangZhou, and the approach we propose to manage and analyze issues related to dining table to help designing specific version of Smart Dining Table which can fit right into the Yam Cha process and cultural environment.