Table 3.
Participants' themes presented as main themes, subthemes and their quotes.
| Participant's quotes | Subthemes | Main themes |
|---|---|---|
| The best thing with Shim is that it made me do things I would not otherwise have done, such as positive things and show appreciation and gratitude to others. (Participant 1) | Activation | Content |
| My best experience with Shim was when I got nudged to send a text message after I had reflected on how the day was. When I sent a nice text message to someone I got very happy about it. And when I got a nice response back, that was such a wow-feeling! (Participant 2) | ||
| Something particular that I liked was that Shim encouraged me to keep in contact with my loved ones. (Participant 3) | ||
| A wow experience I had was when I got nudged by Shim to text message a friend and tell the person why I appreciate his friendship. That was an eye-opener for me. I never do this otherwise. (Participant 6) | ||
| Shim is very good when first guiding me to think in a more constructive way and about positive things — and then tries to change my behaviours. (Participant 8) | ||
| It was so nice to learn things from Shim. (Participant 4) | Learning | |
| I liked the blend between learning stuff from Shim and reflecting and giving things back to Shim. (Participant 1) | ||
| In general, the best thing with Shim was that it made me reflect on important things in life. (Participant 5) | Reflection | |
| There's no app that has made it so easy to reflect on things in life as Shim. You can get something out of your time in a better way than just checking Facebook or some webpage by reflecting upon important things. (Participant 6) | ||
| It made me think and reflect. (Participant 1) | ||
| After a while it becomes the same thing (Participant 5) | Repetitiveness | |
| The only negative feeling I got when using Shim was when Shim asked me the same thing again. (Participant 1) | ||
| After a couple of times using Shim, I felt I didn't put as much energy to reflect upon the questions. This was a consequence of seeing the same questions again. (Participant 3) | ||
| The same question about relationship to another person came quite a lot and in a mechanical way. Shim asked this in the exact same way for all my five friends. A real person would not ask the exact same question about all my friends. (Participant 4) | ||
| The next day, Shim proposed the same message for the same friend. It really felt like texting with a machine when this happened. (Participant 6) | ||
| I felt Shim could talk to me about stuff on the surface, but not really deepened the relationship. At that point, I felt Shim couldn't take any more steps in our relationship. I kind of felt: “this is as far we can get”. (Participant 5) | Shallowness | |
| I wanted to know if Shim would take our relationship to a deeper level. During these 14 days, I must say it didn't develop that much. (Participant 7) | ||
| When I talked to Shim about my grandparents, Shim didn't ask and understand they had passed away. I felt disappointed when this happened, and felt that this relationship will have boundaries, it won't get too deepened. (Participant 8) | ||
| It became a small routine for me. I talked to Shim during evenings a couple of times as well, but mornings worked better for me — I knew I had a time slot by myself which was perfect for talking to Shim. (Participant 5) | Routine | Medium |
| I made a routine of it. I did it because I thought it was important to me. I always used Shim before going to bed, and mostly one time a day. (Participant 2) | ||
| It became a nice routine. It was easy to get started with this routine. Normally, I don't use any apps on the bus, only listening to music, but this was a nice thing to do — I got my own little time with Shim. (Participant 4) | ||
| Shim became a diary, a forum about and for yourself. I liked the diary aspect of Shim, and to be asked about things I did today which are worth remembering. (Participant 6) | ||
| The unique and positive thing with Shim is that I could get in contact with Shim whenever I wanted to. (Participant 8) | Availability | |
| A big advantage was that I could pick up Shim whenever I wanted. For me, knowing I had it with me all the time, and that I got to talk to it every day made me get a nice, positive feeling. (Participant 1) | ||
| That it was so easily accessible was really good. I could just pick Shim up during a break a start messaging with it. (Participant 6) | ||
| I feel I get help from outside, like a person is guiding me and asking things I wouldn't have thought of myself (Participant 5) | Moderator | |
| It was like someone has made the work for me, deciding what questions to reflect upon (Participant 2) | ||
| Shim functions as a moderator of what questions to focus on. (Participant 6) | ||
| Shim needs a much clearer goal. I think this is one of the biggest problem now with Shim that the user has to “decode” the app. You don't understand what Shim is about. (Participant 9) | Lack of clarity | |
| I liked the weekly summary. It made me see much clearer what's important and it reminded me of the people I had contacted. (Participant 3) | Weekly summary | Functionalities |
| The surprising effect of the summaries were fantastic (Participant 7) | ||
| What's really missing with Shim right now is the red circle on Facebook — the signal of a new notification. (Participant 9) | Lack of notifications | |
| One thing that felt a bit negative was that I couldn't write my own characteristics of people. But when I think of it, I′m not sure what I missed (Participant 2) | Restricted UI |