SnapPI: Understanding Everyday Use of Personal Informatics Data Stickers on Ephemeral Social Media

Abstract

Sharing personal informatics data can support accountability, connectedness, and self-expression, but people often find their data too trivial to share on social media. Ephemeral social platforms like Snapchat and Story features have emerged as spaces for sharing more trivial life events, presenting an opportunity to incorporate self-tracked data into sharing. Past work suggests that including data-driven stickers on these platforms can help add additional context to what people share, but little is known about the benefits and challenges of people's everyday experiences with this concept. To understand people's everyday use of data-driven stickers, we designed and developed SnapPI, an app for flexibly incorporating data into stickers for Snapchat. We deployed SnapPI to 21 participants for two weeks, finding that participants value aligning data sharing with Snapchat's communication and stylistic norms. Perceiving Snapchat as a playful platform, participants connected data stickers with various visual components of their Snaps. Stickers were used to incorporate personal informatics data into their existing conversations, and were edited to align with different audience needs or to be expressive. We discuss recommendations for personal data sharing, suggesting supporting flexibility in presentation and aligning with the norms of existing platforms.