Creatively expressing yourself with photos has long been popular via smartphones and on social media, but how do we express our health (and illness) with Instagram and other apps? The Spoonie Living App began as part of a student project, and gives you over 200 colourful and funky meme stickers to enable you to creatively express your health and illness which you can then share via your chats(!).
Want to take part? Here’s more info:
The Spoonie Living app was a small project put together by PhD student Sam Martin. Sam has Celiac Disease, IBS and Arthritis, and shes in the process of writing up a thesis about how people with chronic illnesses such as Arthritis, IBS, ME, CFS and Coeliac Disease use social media to share experiences of their illness and find information. The Spoonie Living app and Sticker pack was created to see if the use of illness and dietary related stickers would help individuals creatively express themselves in a slightly different way to general Meme images found on the internet. It is hoped that using stickers will help towards people creatively managing their illnesses on a daily basis.
But what’s a ‘Spoonie’?
The term ‘Spoonie’ was invented by Christin Miserandino to describe what it’s like to have an invisible illness, like Asthma, IBS, Celiac Disease, Arthritis and more. Spoons are used to measure and describe how someone would manage the amount of energy they feel they have left to complete daily tasks when not feeling 100%. The hashtag #spoonie is really popular, and has been used just over 500,000 times on Instagram alone - it is mainly used by people with hidden illnesses to talk about their experiences daily. The aim of Spoonie Living app and stickers pack is to add to this experience with the use of creative stickers and see if this has a helpful/positive effect on people’s well-being.
Stickers(!)
Stickers have been designed to help you quickly express how youre feeling on a good or a bad day, and are illness (e.g. Spoonie) and diet specific (e.g. Gluten Free, Lactose Free, Vegetarian, Fructose Free). Please feel free to DM me on Twitter (@SpoonieApp) or Instagram (@spoonielivingapp) with any suggestions for new stickers, & Ill be happy to add some new ones (and name them after you)! I can put all submissions on Instagram, and the most popular will feature in the next app update!
There are 198 stickers free, unlock bonus SpooniEmoji images at end of the pack!
Privacy
This was a PhD project right? So what happens to your data?
With the app, absolutely no data is collected. This is because the full iPhone app, and not the stickers app was used in Sams PhD project. However, if you want to use the iPhone and Android apps, you can download the app and read more about it via the website: SpoonieLivingApp.com
About Sam(!)
You can find more about me and my research at: DigitalCoeliac.com or, if you want to follow my photos on how I figure out how to manage symptoms of Celiac Disease etc. & write 80k words(!) of a thesis, follow me on Instagram @gray373