Making mundane pleasures visible: Mediating daily likings with lightweight technology

Abstract

This article discusses the sharing of daily pleasures with lightweight technology. Two mobile applications called PosiPost Me (Mobile internet edition) and PosiPost Be (Bluetooth edition) were developed to understand the potential of remote and proximity-based sharing of positive messages. These implementations are compared through an empirical study of 15 participants in England and The Netherlands who used both applications for a week each. Drawing from interviews and a corpus of 379 shared messages, the study presents an exploration of the types of pleasures people expressed in everyday use. The study addresses the influence of the two applications on the nature of the messages shared. It further points to the importance of the mundaneness of the postings and discusses the role lightweight mobile technology can play in making mundane pleasures visible. © 2010 The Author(s).