Development of design guidelines for e-sticker usage

Abstract

E-Stickers, also simply referred to as stickers, emerged disrupting the Instant messenger market as they differ from their predecessor since they are first of all a more complex non-verbal cue and secondly not standardized or regulated, which allows for the growth of independent sticker creators, brands and companies to release their own sticker products into the market. Given their uniqueness and complexity, developing the stickers usage experience for an Instant Messaging (IM) platform demands a deeper understanding of user’s preferences and needs

research still wildly untapped by academia. This study intends to explore the sticker usage process of KakaoTalk users. For this research we conducted a set of interviews, a survey, and three user workshops. Our findings reveal how the user’s mental model differs from the process imposed by the KakaoTalk platform, where stickers are divided by purchased packs. Instead we recommend IM platforms (1) to consider the audience of the conversation, (2) the user’s idea of perceived personality, (3) the context that the stickers are going to be applied to and (4) the user’s own preference for packs. In conclusion a set of design guidelines are proposed to improve sticker usage on IM platforms by adjusting the platforms sticker usage processes based on the discovered actual usage process and preference of IM platform users.