YaFood! is an app/website encouraging family members to connect emotionally more tightly through talking about food. American families barely spend quality time together. This lack of family time has caused numerous negative consequences including mental health problems. It maybe difficult to unplug from the daily schedule and reconnect with families. However, there can be a subtle approach to increase meaningful family time. From research we learned that family wants to have more emotional connection with their family by sharing food and culture. Leveraging family traditions and communicating through food is a good way to foster special bonds and create positive experiences and memories. On YaFood!, users can send photos and family recipes to share the moment with family members and visually give feedback to show the family culture. YaFood! use Yahoo! emails to send the contents in the platform to family members outside of YaFood! and connect it to other services provided by a third party.

The Space Between : Families spend significantly less time communicating with each other with everyone off at different locations for jobs or extracurricular activities. It's difficult for people to unplug from the daily schedule and reconnect with families. On YaFood!, family can communicate through food whenever and wherever they want by sharing everyday food photos, recipes, and sending food collage postcards.

Designers : Disha Rathor, Takayuki Kato, Sara Park

Course : IDX 524 Interaction Design Workshop

Instructors : Jennifer Levin, JoEllen Kames

Project Partner : Yahoo