Nov. 15, 2005— New technology that's woven into a common kitchen converts everyday tasks, such as turning on a faucet, into immersive experiences that also have environmental benefits.

Cooking with the Elements, coordinated by PhD candidate Leonardo Bonanni at MIT's Media Lab, does away with text-based computer controls and instead overlays a kitchen with visual, auditory and other cues that intuitively inform the user.

In preliminary studies, people comprehended the kitchen space better than without the technology, changing their behavior in ways that could prevent injury and save energy.

"If you take a mundane thing like water and color it with light, people pay more attention to it. Just having more feedback on the use of energy or water automatically has an impact," said Bonanni, who has a background in architecture.

Bonanni experiments in the kitchen because, in his opinion, it is the epitome of a modern space that lacks sensory feedback. Centuries ago, a cook knew when his stove was hot because he could see the fire.

Modern innovation and automation have reduced the experience to buttons and control panels that cannot always be comprehended instinctively.

But Bonanni's kitchen contains motion, sound and temperature sensors, as well as projection technology, that all work together to enhance even the most common tasks.

For example, when a person turns on the water to wash her hands or fill a kettle, a temperature sensor in the faucet head reads the temperature and a light projects an appropriate color into the stream.

A blue light indicates cool water, while a red light indicates hot. In a pilot study, 94 percent of people immediately understood the visual cue, which, according to Bonanni, could reduce scalds and easily translate into less time running a tap to achieve the desired temperature.

Overlaying audiovisuals onto other appliances can have similar benefits.

For instance, most modern electric ranges have heat elements hidden beneath a flat surface in a way that can make it difficult to tell whether the stovetop is hot.

In fact, only 14 percent of the people from Bonanni's study recognized a hot surface on such a stove.

But a video of a fire, complete with the sound crackling wood, projected onto the wall behind the stove improved people's perception to 88 percent.