Online communities: focusing on sociability and usability 论文

摘要

1 Background Millions of people meet online to chat, to find like-minded people, to debate topical issues, to play games, to give or ask for information, to find support, to shop, or just to hang-out with others. They go to chat-rooms, bulletin boards, join discussion groups or they create their group using instant messaging software. Short messaging (also known as ‘texting’) is also gaining popularity in some parts of the world. These online social gatherings are known by a variety of names including ‘online community’, a name coined by early pioneers like Howard Rheingold, who describes these online communities as ‘cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspace’ (Rheingold, 1994, p. 57). 1.1 The scope of this chapter There is no accepted definition of online community. The term means different things to different people (Preece, 2000) so this chapter starts by examining definitions and descriptions of online community from different disciplines, and briefly traces how the topic has emerged. Section 2 outlines research from social psychology, sociology, communications studies, computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human-computer interaction (HCI) that informs our understanding of why people interact they way they do in online communities. Section 3 brings many of these ideas together in the context of design and evaluation of online communities, outlines a design methodology and proposes a frame work for supporting social interaction (i.e., sociability) and designing usability. Section 4 returns to research and briefly reviews