Jennifer Preece

The top five reasons for lurking: improving community experiences for everyone

Even in busy online communities, usually only a small fraction of members post messages. Why do so many people prefer not to contribute publicly? From an online survey that generated 1,188 responses from posters and lurkers from 375 MSN bulletin board communities, 219 lurkers spoke out about their reasons for not posting. While lurkers did not participate publicly, they did seek answers to questions. However, lurkers’ satisfaction with their community experience was lower than those who post. Data from 19 checkbox items and over 490 open-ended responses were analyzed. From this analysis, the main reasons why lurkers lurk were concerned with: not needing to post; needing to find out more about the group before participating; thinking that they were being helpful by not posting; not being able to make the software work (i.e., poor usability); and not liking the group dynamics or the community was a poor fit for them. Two key conclusions were drawn from this analysis. First, there are many reasons why people lurk in online discussion communities. Second, and most important, most lurkers are not selfish free-riders. From these findings, it is clear that there are many ways to improve online community experiences for both posters and lurkers. Some solutions require improved software and better tools, but moderation and better interaction support will produce dramatic improvements. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Empathic communities: balancing emotional and factual communication

Abstract The Web empowers a diverse population of users and this is reflected in both the demography and interests of today’s on-line communities. Many of these communities provide an essential social function by enabling people with medical or personal problems to discuss their concerns with others. Physicians can provide the facts, but other patients can tell you what it really feels like and what to expect next, in a way that only someone with personal experience can. A study of the messages from an on-line medical support group shows that empathy is an essential ingredient in participants’ discussions. Better tools are needed to empower patients to help themselves by finding information and contacting other patients in bulletin board communities. Suggestions about the nature of these tools are discussed. In particular, supporting a balance between empathic and factual communication is stressed.

Predicting quality in educational software:Evaluating for learning, usability and the synergy between them

Abstract Teachers need to be able to evaluate predictively educational software so that they can make decisions about what software to purchase and how to use software in classrooms. The conventional approach to predictive evaluation is to use a checklist. We argue that checklists are seriously flawed in principle because they do not encompass a consideration of learning issues. More particularly they fail to adopt a socio-constructivist view of learning. We propose an approach that adapts the idea of usability heuristics by taking account of a socio-constructivist learning perspective. This leads to a set of `learning with software heuristics. A notable feature of these heuristics is that they attend to the integration of usability and learning issues.

A framework for analyzing and understanding online communities

Social interactions in online communities are varied and often complex, as are the communities themselves. The characteristics of the people, the range of purposes they pursue, the type of governance policies they develop, and the design of the software supporting a community, vary from community to community. These characteristics determine a community’s sociability. Thus, the availability of powerful analytic tools to help designers understand existing technology-supported social activity online can broaden the spectrum of design knowledge and promote new insights for designing computer applications of this sort. In this paper, we present one such analytic tool—a theoretically-based online community framework (OCF). In order to demonstrate the efficacy of the framework we elaborate on its communication constituent using semiotic theory to help us. This constituent is particularly important in the OCF because it addresses computer-mediated communication between community members, and also communication from interactive software designers to users via the software they design. This latter kind of communication can shape the community’s experience to a considerable extent, as our analysis shows. The paper ends with an agenda for future research. q 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A Conceptual Framework for Demographic Groups Resistant to On-line Community Interaction

Demographic communities can become on-line communities if their members have common interests, needs, and goals, a desire for mutual communication, and can easily find one another to establish relationships. People are sometimes quite resistant to interacting on-line even when they regularly use the Internet for information gathering and e-mail. With mid-life career changers as a representative demographic group, this paper discusses the factors causing this resistance, ways to mitigate it and bring group members into on-line community environments, and mechanisms for sustaining their online interaction. Several methods for improving the sociability and usability of on-line communities are proposed, and it is recommended that the selection and implementation of technology be directed by the groups sociability and usability requirements.

Online communities: a longitudinal analysis of communication activities

Online communities (OCs) are seen as an important stimulus to electronic business. However, surprisingly little is known about how the communication activity of their users develops and changes over time. A longitudinal study bears the potential to better elaborate the enabling and inhibiting factors of the users communication activity in OCs. To explore these phenomena, we aim to develop a conceptual framework that serves as a foundation to guide an explorative data analysis of real OCs. The notions of common ground, information overload, interactivity and social loafing will be used to explain the communication activity of the users in online communities. The empirically explored framework will help organizations to support the development of OCs and utilize them in an economically successful way. Based on a literature review we develop a first conceptual framework. Then, we apply it to describe the development of the communication activity and its determinants in an OC hosted by a German financial service provider. The study examines over 33,000 participants and 1.03 million messages over a period of 3 years. We find a strong effect of external factors on the size of this OC. The size of the OC shows no direct influence on the communication activity of the users. But, in reaction to the increasing information load, communication strategies change and herewith influence the communication activity. The heterogeneity of the users activity is growing over time and a small minority of users writes more and more of the postings.

New issues in teaching HCI: pinning a tail on a moving donkey

As technology changes, so does the area of human-computer interaction. HCI education must continuously change to meet the new challenges to user interaction. The World Wide Web and other distributed networks, hand-held devices, and embedded computing all present new challenges for user-centered design methods, usability testing, and other forms of evaluation. In addition, as more people use technology, the diversity of users increases, requiring increased attention to concepts such as accessibility and universal usability. This panel will address the challenges of keeping HCI education up-to-date and offer approaches that have been successfully used. The four major topics addressed by the panel will be 1) the challenge of rapidly changing technology, 2) new methods for user-centered design, 3) student involvement with users, and 4) balancing HCI theory and HCI practice.

Human-centered computing, online communities and virtual environments

This report summarizes results of the first EC/NSF joint Advanced Research Workshop, which identified key research challenges and opportunities in information technology.

Revitalizing an online community

It was established early on in this study that a Language, Literacy and Culture Program (LLC) site is needed to keep the community connected. A community-centered design was considered, and implemented in the fall of 1999. The current study was implemented to assess why the site failed and what could be done to revive it. The findings of the current study indicated that the community did not develop as expected despite the teams effort to follow a community-centered approach. In this paper we consider the reasons for the sites failure, and what could be done to revitalize the community. Through surveys, and interviews it was determined that the community needed more active participation from the moderator and faculty. They also required a more interactive and better developed design, and special care should be taken to train the members who need it on the use of technology involved.

Designing multimedia for human needs and capabilities Guest editorial for Interacting with Computers Special Issue

Abstract The central tenet of HCI is to ensure that software and hardware design supports users doing their tasks. Most of the papers in this Special Issue go one step beyond designing for usability — they also address design issues related to supporting human values. As computer usage becomes more diverse both in terms of the range of users and types of applications, human values such as democracy will become increasingly important and controversial, especially, as the number of people coming onto the Internet increases. For example, the issue of computer haves and have nots is well known, but governments are only just starting to think through its implications in terms of future policy. In addition, understanding users affective responses to systems and how emotions are conveyed across networks is starting to gain designers attention. Brenda Laurels company, Purple Moon, is a clear example of the perceived need of designing to support users emotional needs, in this case, teenage girls.