Let's stitch me and you together! Designing a photo co-creation activity to stimulate playfulness in the workplace

Abstract

We present a photo co-creation activity, called "Stitched Groupies," in a photo-taking and sharing platform deployed inside IBM. "Stitched Groupies" allow employees to take and combine photos with peers asynchronously across physical boundaries. In a 25-day exploratory field study with 50 users taking 68 half-photos (of which 52 were completed by others), we categorized themes such as Spliced Faces, Composed Scenes, Body Modifications, Inanimate Objects and Doppelgangers. Our results suggest that photo co-creation can stimulate playfulness and fun in the workplace.