Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

skip to main content
article

Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice

Published: 01 July 2004 Publication History

Abstract

What makes online communities successful? There are many indicators of success. Some are easily observed and measured, such as the number of people registered in the community, or the number who participate, or the number of messages posted, replied to or read over a certain period. How community members judge their community is also important. What do they like or dislike and how committed are they to the community? In this paper, we describe participatory community-centred development an approach that relies heavily on iterative evaluation. We then point out that standard evaluation techniques are inadequate for evaluating online communities because they do not address sociability. Finally, we propose two approaches from research that can be tailed for evaluating online communities. Both attempt to draw directly on what community users want. The first is rooted in ethnography and the second is a form of heuristic evaluation. The paper ends with an agenda for developing these approaches to make them practical yet robust.

References

[1]
Preece, J. (2000) Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, Chichester, England, John Wiley & Sons.
[2]
Wenger, E. (1999) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
[3]
Maloney-Krichmar, D. (2003) 'The meaning of online health community in the lives of its members: roles, relationships and group dynamics', Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, UMBC, Baltimore.
[4]
Preece, J. (2004) 'Etiquette online: from nice to necessary', Communication of the ACM, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 55-61.
[5]
Maloney-Krichmar, D. and Preece, J. (2004) A Multilevel Analysis of Sociability, Usability and Community Dynamics in an Online Health Support Community (in press).
[6]
Norman, D.A. (1986) 'Cognitive engineering', User-Centered Systems Design, Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[7]
Kim, A.J. (2000) Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities Berkeley, CA, Peachpit Press.
[8]
Powazek, D. (2002) Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places, Indianapolis, New Riders.
[9]
Muller, M.J. (1992) 'Retrospective on a year of participatory design using the PICTIVE technique', Paper presented at the Proc. CHI'92 Human Factors in Computing Systems.
[10]
Schuler, D. and Namioka, A. (1993) Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum.
[11]
Kollock, P. (1998) 'Design principles in online communities', PC Update, Vol. 15, pp. 58-60.
[12]
Preece, J., Rogers, Y. and Sharp, H. (2002) Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, New York, NY, John Wiley & Sons.
[13]
Fiore, A., Teirnan, S.L. and Smith, M. (2001) 'Observed behavior and perceived value of authors in usenet newsgroups: bridging the gap', (Available November 2003: http://research.microsoft.com/~masmith/).
[14]
Fiore, A. and Smith, M. (2001) 'Tree map visualizations of newsgroups', (Available November 2003: http://research.microsoft.com/~masmith/)
[15]
Smith, M. and Fiore, A. (2001) 'Visualization components for persistent conversations', Proceedings of ACM SIG CHI Conference.
[16]
Michael, T., Randall, D. and Bentley, R. (1994) 'Situated evaluation for cooperative systems', Proceedings of the 1994 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
[17]
Nielsen, J. (1993) Usability Engineering, Boston, AP Professional.
[18]
Shneiderman, B. (1998) Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, 3rd Edition, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.
[19]
Baym, N. (1997) 'Interpreting soap operas and creating community: inside an electronic fan culture', in Kiesler, S. (Ed.): Culture of the Internet, Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 103-119.
[20]
Markham, A.N. (1998) Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space, Walnut Creek, CA, Altamira.
[21]
Cherny, L. (1999) Conversation and Community: Chat in a Virtual World, Stanford, CA, CSLI Publications.
[22]
Hakken, D. (1999) Cyborgs @ Cyberspace? An Ethnographer Looks to the Future, New York, Routledge.
[23]
Molich, R. and Nielsen, J. (1990) 'Improving a human-computer dialogue', Communications of the ACM, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 338-348.
[24]
Nielsen, J. (1994) 'Heuristic evaluation', Usability Inspection Methods, New York, John Wiley & Sons.
[25]
Preece, J. (2001) 'Sociability and usability in online communities: determining and measuring success', Behaviour & Information Technology, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 347-356.
[26]
Abras, C. (2003) 'Determining success in online academic and health communities: developing usability and sociability heuristics', Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, UMBC, Baltimore.
[27]
Abras, C., Ozok, A. and Preece, J. (2004) 'Emerging heuristics for evaluating online health and education communities', (in press).
[28]
Fetterman, D.M. (1998) Ethnography: Step by step, Second Edition, Vol. 17, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications.
[29]
LeCompte, M.D. and Schensul, J. (1999) Analyzing and Interpreting Ethnographic Data, Vol. 5, Walnut Creek, CA, AltaMira Press.
[30]
Miles, M.B. and Huberman, A.M. (1994) An Expanded Sourcebook: Qualitative data analysis (2nd Edition), London, Sage Publications.
[31]
Wolcott, H. (1999) Ethnography: A Way of Seeing, Walnut Creek, CA, AltaMira Press.
[32]
Benne, K.D. and Sheats, P. (1948) 'Functional roles of group members', Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 41-19.
[33]
Bales, R.F. (1958) 'Task roles and social roles in problem-solving groups', in MaCcoby, E.E., Newcomb, T.M. and Hartley, E.L. (Eds.): Readings in Social Psychology, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, pp. 437-458.
[34]
Wellman, B. and Frank, K. (2001) 'Getting support from personal communities', in Lin, N., Burt, R. and Cook, K. (Eds.): Social Capital: Theory and Research, Chicago, IL, Aldine De Gruytere.
[35]
Nardi, B.A. (1997) 'The use of ethnographic methods design and evaluation', in Helander, M.G.T., Landauer, K. and Prabhu, P. (Eds.): Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction (2nd Edition), Amsterdam, Netherlands, Elsevier Science B.V., pp. 361-366.
[36]
Baym, N. (2000) Tune in, log on: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications.
[37]
Hine, C. (2000) Virtual Ethnography, Thousand Oaks, CA, Sage Publications.
[38]
Silver, D. (1999) 'Localizing the global village: lessons from the blacksburg electronic village', in Brown, R.B. and Fishwick, M.W. (Eds.): The Global Village: Dead or Alive?, Bowling Green, OH, Popular Press, pp. 79-92.
[39]
Jeffries, R., Miller, J., Wharton, C. and Uyeda, K. (1991) 'User interface evaluation in the real world: a comparison of four techniques', CHI 91, Conference Proceedings, ACM Press, pp. 119-124.
[40]
Kanter, L. and Rosenbaum, S. (1997) 'Usability studies of www sites: heuristic evaluation vs. laboratory testing', Proceedings of the 15th Annual International Conference on Computer Documentation, ACM Press, pp. 153-160.
[41]
Sears, A. (1997) 'Heuristic walkthroughs: finding the problems without the noise', International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 213-234.
[42]
Steves, M.P., Morse, E., Gutwin, C. and Greenberg, S. (2001) 'A comparison of usage evaluation and inspection methods for assessing groupware usability', Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, Session, 3, pp. 125-134.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)#PoetsOfInstagram: Navigating The Practices And Challenges Of Novice Poets On InstagramProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642173(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2019)Community heuristics for user interface evaluation of crowdsourcing platformsFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2018.02.02895:C(775-789)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
  • (2019)Participatory Evaluation of Human-Data Interaction Design GuidelinesHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 201910.1007/978-3-030-29381-9_30(475-494)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2019
  • Show More Cited By
  1. Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image International Journal of Web Based Communities
    International Journal of Web Based Communities  Volume 1, Issue 1
    July 2004
    122 pages
    ISSN:1477-8394
    EISSN:1741-8216
    Issue’s Table of Contents

    Publisher

    Inderscience Publishers

    Geneva 15, Switzerland

    Publication History

    Published: 01 July 2004

    Author Tags

    1. ethnography
    2. evaluation
    3. heuristics
    4. online communities
    5. sociability
    6. usability
    7. web-based communities

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 09 Nov 2024

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)#PoetsOfInstagram: Navigating The Practices And Challenges Of Novice Poets On InstagramProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642173(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2019)Community heuristics for user interface evaluation of crowdsourcing platformsFuture Generation Computer Systems10.1016/j.future.2018.02.02895:C(775-789)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
    • (2019)Participatory Evaluation of Human-Data Interaction Design GuidelinesHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 201910.1007/978-3-030-29381-9_30(475-494)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2019
    • (2017)Identification of differences in university e-environment between selected EU and non-EU countries using knowledge mining methodsInternational Journal of Web Based Communities10.5555/3124927.312493213:2(236-261)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
    • (2017)A survey on topological properties, network models and analytical measures in detecting influential nodes in online social networksInternational Journal of Web Based Communities10.5555/3070882.307088913:1(137-156)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
    • (2017)Questionnaires in the design and evaluation of community-oriented technologiesInternational Journal of Web Based Communities10.5555/3070882.307088313:1(4-35)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
    • (2016)When the web supports communities of placeInternational Journal of Web Based Communities10.1504/IJWBC.2016.07775812:3(216-237)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016
    • (2016)Enforcing community guidelines in web-based communitiesInternational Journal of Web Based Communities10.1504/IJWBC.2016.07725412:2(131-146)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016
    • (2015)Socio-technical gaps in online collaborative consumption (OCC)Proceedings of the 33rd Annual International Conference on the Design of Communication10.1145/2775441.2775458(1-9)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2015
    • (2014)Using narratives as tools for channeling participation in online communitiesComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2014.04.01337:C(64-72)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2014
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    View options

    Get Access

    Login options

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media