immersiTea: Exploring Multisensory Virtual Reality Environments to Enrich Bubble Tea Drinking Experiences

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Zheng, Yuchen; Deng, Jialin; Wang, Hongyue; Mueller, Florian ‘Floyd’; Pan, Xueni and Gillies, Marco. 2025. 'immersiTea: Exploring Multisensory Virtual Reality Environments to Enrich Bubble Tea Drinking Experiences'. In: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’25). Yokohama, Japan 26 April - 1 May 2025. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720228

Abstract or Description

HCI is increasingly interested in multisensory experiences; however, multisensory drinking seems to be underexplored. We introduce "immersiTea", a novel multisensory virtual reality (VR) system that aims to enrich the experience of drinking low-sugar bubble tea. Leveraging crossmodal correspondences between visual, auditory, and flavor stimuli, immersiTea integrates immersive VR environments with physical drinking actions to enhance sensory and emotional engagement. Through a mixed-method evaluation (n = 31), we found that the VR environments can elevate participants’ enjoyment and sweetness perception while reducing reliance on sugar. Participants highlighted the role of playful interactivity and sensory congruence in drinking, making it a more engaging experience. These findings contribute to the growing field of Human-Food Interaction by showcasing the potential of immersive technologies to promote healthier and more enjoyable consumption practices. This work demonstrates the potential of immersiTea to not only enrich the drinking experience but also inspire future advancements in multisensory beverage design.

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item (Poster)

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720228

Additional Information:

"© 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record is available at, https://doi.org/ 10.1145/3706599.3720228."

Keywords:

Virtual Reality, Multisensory Experience Design, Human-food interaction, Cross-modal Correspondences, Food Science

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Computing

Dates: