While most online accounts are designed assuming a single user, past work has found that romantic couples often share many accounts. Our study examines couples' account sharing behaviors as their relationships develop. We conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with people who are currently in romantic relationships to understand couples' account sharing behaviors over the lifecycle of their relationship. We find that account sharing behaviors progress through a relationship where major changes happen at the start of cohabitation, marriage, and occasional breakup. We also find that sharing behaviors and motivations are influenced by couples' relationship ecology, which consists of the dynamics between the couples and the social environment they live in. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for further study to support couples' sharing needs at different relationship stages and identify design opportunities for technology solutions to facilitate couples' sharing.
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“Did You Just Purchase a Butt Head on Amazon?” – A Diary Study of Couples’ Everyday Account Sharing
Many couples report sharing digital accounts for convenience even though this puts their privacy and security at risk. In order to design for couples' secured information sharing needs, we need to look at their day-to-day account sharing behaviors in context. We conducted a 30-day diary study of daily account sharing behaviors with 14 participants currently in a romantic relationship. We analyzed 382 diary entries and 529 sharing stories to understand couples' everyday sharing behaviors. Our study also coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing us to discover new sharing behaviors and account uses in quarantine.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1704087
- PAR ID:
- 10285054
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- CSCW '20 Companion: Conference Companion Publication of the 2020 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 311 to 315
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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