Mapo Tofu, Maybe
People Interacting with Mapo Tofu, Maybe at ITP 2026 Spring Show
Year: 2026
Medium: Interactive Exhibition Design, Information Design
Tools: Webcam Sensor, Claude AI, Gemini NanoBanana Pro
Role: Concept, Interaction Design, Programming with Claude Code
Partner: Althea Xiu (Responsible for all visual designs)
Overview
Mapo Tofu, Maybe is an interactive exhibition that brings to life the food and cultural heritage research of scholar and NYU professor Fabio Parasecoli.
Food is something we easily overlooked. It sustains daily life and often brings joy in the making. It is also one of the most evolving and lively mediums that records human culture and civilization.
Using Mapo Tofu, a traditional Sichuan dish with countless variations across Asian countries and cultures, the exhibition embodies a key idea from Parasecoli's research: food culture is always evolving, and food heritage is shaped through a process of co-creation. So maybe there isn’t an “orthodox” recipe for a dish. Reimagined as a participatory museum, Mapo Tofu, Maybe invites visitors to craft their own version of Mapo Tofu and share their recipes and creations with others. The goal is to embody a simple idea — tradition isn't a set of rules; it's a conversation over time.
What does this project do technically?
This project is exhibited as a projected interface with webcam-based hand tracking. Designed by human hands and built with Claude Code, it runs as a web-based experience. The system also connects to the Gemini Nano Banana API, which generates a unique Mapo Tofu for each participant based on their choices of ingredients.
How do people interact with the project?
The project invites participants to make their own Mapo Tofu through a projected interface mapped to a webcam's detection area. Using only their hands, participants interact directly with the virtual kitchen. Once their choices are made, the system generates a unique dish based on their selections. Participants can then choose to showcase their dish, along with the process behind it, on a shared “Great Wall of Mapo Tofu”, where other visitors can explore and get inspired by others’ Mapo Tofu recipes.
User Flow at A Glance
Step 1: Game Start!
Step 2: Pick the ingredients. Shop whatever you like. You’ll have a chance to decide what to cook and what not.Step 3: Choose a cookware!
Step 4: Turn on the fire and put in ingredients in the order you like! The window on the right transcribe your steps into a recipe.
Step 5: Ready? Let it cook for a bit.
Step 7: You get a Mapo Tofu of your own!
Step 8: Choose to share the result with others and showcase your recipe.
Everyone’s Mapo Tofu is preserved on a Great Wall of Mapo Tofu!
People Interacting with Mapo Tofu, Maybe at ITP 2026 Spring Show.
This project was part of the final deliverable of the class Playful Communication of Serious Research, taught by Brett Peterson at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Mater Program. The goal is to train students to work with a NYU researcher and design an interactive exhibition based off of their research. Production was the last bit of the process. Before that was a lot of ideating, researching, meeting with researchers, aligning the core idea of their research, etc. The entire process mirror how a museum would bring an interactive exhibition to life. I shall show the Conceptual Package and Schematic Package we built for project below.
The Conceptual Package
The Schematic Package