“She’ll just grab any device that’s closer”: A Study of Everyday Device & Account Sharing in Households
Venue
Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM (2016) (to appear)
Publication Year
2016
Authors
Tara Matthews, Kerwell Liao, Anna Turner, Marianne Berkovich, Rob Reeder, Sunny Consolvo
BibTeX
Abstract
Many technologies assume a single user will use an account or device. But account
and device sharing situations (when 2+ people use a single device or account) may
arise during everyday life. We present results from a multiple-methods study of
device and account sharing practices among household members and their relations.
Among our findings are that device and account sharing was common, and mobile
phones were often shared despite being considered “personal” devices. Based on our
study results, we organize sharing practices into a taxonomy of six sharing types —
distinct patterns of what, why, and how people shared. We also present two themes
that cut across sharing types: that (1) trust in sharees and (2) convenience highly
influenced sharing practices. Based on these findings, implications for study and
technology design.
