Public sharing is integral to online platforms. This includes the popular multimedia messaging application Snapchat, on which public sharing is relatively new and unexplored in prior research. In mobile-first applications, sharing contexts are dynamic. However, it is unclear how context impacts users' sharing decisions. As platforms increasingly rely on user-generated content, it is important to also broadly understand user motivations and considerations in public sharing. We explored these aspects of content sharing through a survey of 1,515 Snapchat users. Our results indicate that users primarily have intrinsic motivations for publicly sharing Snaps, such as to share an experience with the world, but also have considerations related to audience and sensitivity of content. Additionally, we found that Snaps shared publicly were contextually different from those privately shared. Our findings suggest that content sharing systems can be designed to support sharing motivations, yet also be sensitive to private contexts.
We present Project IRL (In Real Life), a suite of five mobile apps we created to explore novel ways of supporting in-person social interactions with augmented reality. In recent years, the tone of public discourse surrounding digital technology has become increasingly critical, and technology's influence on the way people relate to each other has been blamed for making people feel "alone together," diverting their attention from truly engaging with one another when they interact in person. Motivated by this challenge, we focus on an under-explored design space: playful co-located interactions. We evaluated the apps through a deployment study that involved interviews and participant observations with 101 people. We synthesized the results into a series of design guidelines that focus on four themes: (1) device arrangement (e.g., are people sharing one phone, or does each person have their own?), (2) enablers (e.g., should the activity focus on an object, body part, or pet?), (3) affordances of modifying reality (i.e., features of the technology that enhance its potential to encourage various aspects of social interaction), and (4) co-located play (i.e., using technology to make in-person play engaging and inviting). We conclude by presenting our design guidelines for future work on embodied social AR.
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