bsc(hons) dissertation with distinction - a pre-friendster social networking service for llantrisant

. . . . . . . . . .

Jonathan Bishop

Development and Evaluation of aVirtual Community

Sponsored by Llantrisant Town Trust

Academic Year: 2001/02

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................. 1

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................ 5AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ....................................................................................................... 5PROJECT DEVELOPMENT PLAN........................................................................................... 6

BACKGROUND........................................................................................................................... 7DEFINING COMMUNITY....................................................................................................... 7PURPOSE OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES................................................................................. 7STRUCTURE OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES............................................................................ 8

Communities and Sub-communities .......................................................................... 8Virtual Community Models........................................................................................ 9Message Boards .........................................................................................................................9Chat Rooms................................................................................................................................9Email Lists and Newsletters......................................................................................................9Instant Messaging and Internet Relay Chat..............................................................................9Virtual Worlds ...........................................................................................................................9Small Message System..............................................................................................................9Social Organisation ................................................................................................. 10Growth of Virtual Communities .............................................................................. 11Lifecycle of Virtual Communities............................................................................ 12

TECHNOLOGIES FOR ACCESSING VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES.............................................. 12Personal Computers ................................................................................................ 12Interactive Television and MSN TV ........................................................................ 12Internet Kiosks ......................................................................................................... 13Mobile Phones ......................................................................................................... 13

TECHNOLOGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES ....................................... 13Server-side Scripting ............................................................................................... 13Flash......................................................................................................................... 14Java .......................................................................................................................... 14JavaScript................................................................................................................. 14

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMMUNITY MEMBERS ................................................................ 14Actors ....................................................................................................................... 14Membership Lifecycle of a Social Actor................................................................................15Environment ............................................................................................................. 15Community Places...................................................................................................................16Adaptive Hypermedia..............................................................................................................16Interaction................................................................................................................ 17Selection...................................................................................................................................17Opportunities............................................................................................................................19

SUMMARY.......................................................................................................................... 20Choice of Virtual Community Model ...................................................................... 20Access Method ......................................................................................................... 20Technologies ............................................................................................................ 21

METHODOLOGY..................................................................................................................... 22TASK ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................ 23

Content of the Questionnaire .................................................................................. 24Demographics ..........................................................................................................................24Personal Interests .....................................................................................................................24Features.................................................................................................................... 24

USER INTERACTION STUDY .............................................................................................. 25Data Gathering Techniques .................................................................................... 25Metrics and Data Logging.......................................................................................................25Focus Group Discussions ........................................................................................................25

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT........................................................................................... 25Design and Implementation..................................................................................... 25Node Design.............................................................................................................................25Alpha Testing...........................................................................................................................28Beta Testing .............................................................................................................................28

Jonathan Bishop ⋅ Development and Evaluation of a Virtual Community ⋅ 2

FINDINGS................................................................................................................................... 30TASK ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................ 30

Demographics .......................................................................................................... 30Features.................................................................................................................... 30Areas of Interest....................................................................................................... 31

USER INTERACTION STUDY .............................................................................................. 32Membership Levels .................................................................................................. 32Task Methods Employed.......................................................................................... 32Profile Usage ........................................................................................................... 32Focus Group Discussions........................................................................................ 32Censorship................................................................................................................................32Privacy and Data Protection....................................................................................................34

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................... 34DETAILED DESIGN................................................................................................................. 35

PLANNING SOCIABILITY.................................................................................................... 35Users Needs.............................................................................................................. 35Social Inclusion........................................................................................................ 36Security..................................................................................................................... 36Access Levels ..........................................................................................................................36Tracking Data ..........................................................................................................................36Privacy and Data Protection................................................................................... 37Opt-in/Opt-out Policy..............................................................................................................37Ignore Feature ..........................................................................................................................37Censorship ............................................................................................................... 37

APPLICATION DESIGN ....................................................................................................... 37User Interface .......................................................................................................... 38Adaptive Hypermedia..............................................................................................................38Node Layout and Graphic Design...........................................................................................39Content Management System .................................................................................. 40Data Collection........................................................................................................ 41Usage Statistics........................................................................................................................41User Activity............................................................................................................................41Revenue Generation................................................................................................. 41URI Listings.............................................................................................................................41Classifieds ................................................................................................................................41Targeted Advertising ...............................................................................................................41Application ............................................................................................................... 42Technologies ............................................................................................................................42Error Prevention.......................................................................................................................42

DEVELOPMENT PHASE........................................................................................................ 43FUNCTION POINT ANALYSIS ............................................................................................. 43IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION............................................................................... 43

Implementation ........................................................................................................ 43Alpha Testing Findings............................................................................................ 43Design and Navigation ............................................................................................................43Language..................................................................................................................................44Summary ..................................................................................................................................44Beta Testing Findings.............................................................................................. 44Think Aloud and User Feedback ............................................................................................44Logging Actual Use.................................................................................................................45

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................... 46LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS........................................................................... 48

Recommendations for Sponsor................................................................................ 48Recommendations for Future Research.................................................................. 48User Behaviour and Recommendation Systems ....................................................................48Community Development and Regeneration .........................................................................48

APPENDIX I – EVALUATION RAW DATA ....................................................................... 49ALPHA TESTING ................................................................................................................ 49

Visibility of system status......................................................................................... 49Match between system and the real world.............................................................. 49User control and freedom........................................................................................ 49Consistency and standards...................................................................................... 49


Error prevention ...................................................................................................... 49Recognition rather than recall ................................................................................ 49Flexibility and efficiency of use............................................................................... 49Aesthetic and minimalist design.............................................................................. 49Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors..................................... 49Help and documentation.......................................................................................... 49

BETA TESTING................................................................................................................... 50Thinking Aloud......................................................................................................... 50Evaluator 1 (Admin)................................................................................................................50Evaluator 2 (Leader)................................................................................................................50Evaluator 3 (Member) .............................................................................................................51Evaluator 4 (Visitor)................................................................................................................51User Feedback ......................................................................................................... 51Evaluator 1 (Admin)................................................................................................................51Evaluator 2 (Leader)................................................................................................................51Evaluator 3 (Member) .............................................................................................................51Evaluator 4 (Visitor)................................................................................................................51

APPENDIX II – PROJECT STATUS REPORTS................................................................. 52JULY-2001 TO SEP-2001 – BACKGROUND ....................................................................... 52

Red Flags ................................................................................................................. 52Activities during the report period.......................................................................... 52Activities planned for the next report period.......................................................... 52Problems/Issues ....................................................................................................... 52

OCT-2001 TO DEC-2001 – RESEARCH REPORT ............................................................... 52Red Flags ................................................................................................................. 52Activities during the report period.......................................................................... 52Activities planned for the next report period.......................................................... 52Problems/Issues ....................................................................................................... 52

DEC-2001 TO JAN-2002 – RESEARCH ANALYSIS REPORT .............................................. 52Red Flags ................................................................................................................. 52Activities during the report period.......................................................................... 52Activities planned for the next report period.......................................................... 52Problems/Issues ....................................................................................................... 52

JAN-2002 TO FEB-2002 – DESIGN .................................................................................... 53Red Flags ................................................................................................................. 53Activities during the report period.......................................................................... 53Activities planned for the next report period.......................................................... 53Problems/Issues ....................................................................................................... 53

JAN-2002 TO APR-2002 – IMPLEMENTATION AND TESTING ........................................... 53Red Flags ................................................................................................................. 53Activities during the report period.......................................................................... 53Activities planned for the next report period.......................................................... 53Problems/Issues ....................................................................................................... 53

APR-2002 – FINAL REPORT .............................................................................................. 53Red Flags ................................................................................................................. 53Activities during the report period.......................................................................... 53Activities planned for the next report period.......................................................... 53Problems/Issues ....................................................................................................... 53

APPENDIX III – PROJECT STATUS MEETINGS............................................................. 5424/09/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5401/10/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5408/10/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5415/10/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5422/10/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5429/10/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5413/11/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5410/12/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5417/12/2001 ........................................................................................................................ 5507/01/2002 ........................................................................................................................ 5528/01/2002 ........................................................................................................................ 5525/02/2002 ........................................................................................................................ 5508/03/2002 ........................................................................................................................ 55


18/04/2002 ........................................................................................................................ 55APPENDIX IV – PROJECT DEVELOPMENT MEETINGS............................................. 56

DECEMBER 2001 – PROJECT REQUIREMENTS MEETING.................................................. 56APRIL 2002 – APPLICATION PREVIEW MEETING ............................................................. 56

TABLES AND FIGURES.......................................................................................................... 57

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................ 59REFERENCES...................................................................................................................... 59BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................................. 59


..........Development and Evaluation of a Virtual CommunitySponsored by Llantrisant Town Trust

Introduction

The Llantrisant Town Trust wishes to provide an online service to a number of user groupswithin the Llantrisant community. The Trust would first of all like to investigate theeffectiveness of virtual communities as well the types of services they could provide and howtheir target groups interact with these services.

Aims and Objectives

The main aims of the project are to assess the uses of virtual communities and resourcesassociated with them and then to develop and evaluate a web application for the LlantrisantTown Trust that has the functionality they require and supports sociability.The application that is developed will not necessarily be a fully working application, as thefocus of this project is not simply to develop a Web application but to look at the underlyingsocial issues that can be implemented into a virtual environment so that there is a greatermatch between it and the real world.

Objective DescriptionInvestigation into virtual communities A detailed analysis of all current virtual community models

and social issues relating to the development and use ofvirtual communities.

Development of a working model of a VirtualCommunity

A working application based on investigations and studiesthat allows users to interact using specific tools and virtualcommunity models.

Evaluation of working model An assessment of the virtual community from both an expertand user perspective.

Table 1 Project Objectives


Project Development Plan

The project will span over an eight-month period, which is dividing into six activity stages.At the end of each stage, a Project Status Report is presented to the sponsor and projectsupervisor.Project Status Meetings are held once a week with the project supervisor and at the end ofeach phase with the project supervisor and sponsor. The meetings begin with a report onproject activities and general issues as well as a review of the project status reports whenrequired.The meetings also look at the current action items and review the information items. A reportis emailed to the project supervisor and sponsor shortly after the meeting.Project Development Meetings are held twice during the project period with the sponsor todiscuss the technical aspects of the project to ensure that the application meets the objectivesof both the Sponsor and the author.

ActivityID

Name Description StartDate

EndDate

Dependencies

0 Background BackgroundResearch

Sep2001

Oct2001

1 Research Conduct Research Oct2001

Dec2001

0

2 Analysis Analysis ofResearch

Dec2001

Dec2002

1

3 Design Design Stage Dec2002

Jan2002

2

4 Implementation ImplementationStage

Jan2002

Feb2002

3

5 Testing Evaluation/BugFixing

Feb2002

Mar2002

4

6 Presentation Presentation April2002

April2002

5

Table 2 Outline of Activities during the project period


Background

An organic community (in a neighbourhood, quarter, extended family or workplace) is arelatively stable unit with many short and overlapping communication lines and jointactivities. Virtual communities, on the other hand, are loose affiliations of people that can fallapart at any moment. For instance, leaving a group on the Internet is simple and may hardlybe noticed (van Dijk, 1999). A virtual community can take many forms; email and Listservs,Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) to name just a few. These are allcompletely different techniques of communication within a user community, but all provide away of participating in a virtual world.

Defining Community

Initially, communities were defined by physical features such as size, location and theboundaries that confined them. In later years when commuting became a way of life formany urban dwellers, identifying, defining, and measuring physical characteristics ofpopulations in continual transit became a problem. Furthermore, cheaper transportation madeit easier for people to join multiple communities to satisfy different needs. Subsequently, thestrength and type of relationships among people seemed more promising criteria for definingcommunities (Wellman, 1997).

The term community may have originated from the Latin words com- (together) and unus(one). This definition conjures up visions of the idealist’s community in which every memberhas an important role, a place where everyone works together towards a common goal andhas a common purpose. Today’s ‘communities’ are more divided since everyone isconsidered an individual, who are perhaps more likely to be members of several networks ofindividuals rather than a community in an idealistic sense.

It is too easy to log into an on-line chat system and imagine that it is just like wandering into alocal bar. It is too easy to log-in and image that it is all make believe. It is altogether too easyto enter a virtual world and imagine that this allows us to understand the ‘real’ one. Any studyof virtual community will involve us in the difficult job of picking a path across a shiftingterrain, where issues of presence, reality, illusion, morality, power, feeling, trust, love, andmuch more, set up roadblocks at every turn (Bell, 2000).

How is it possible to determine who is a member of a community? Does one need to beaccepted by the other members of a community in order to feel a part of it? Communitiestend to be exclusive in some way or other, where people have to meet a certain criteria inorder to be considered a member. This criteria could simple be that a person is physicallyresident in that community, or that they have certain claims to be part of it (such as theFreemen of Llantrisant).

Purpose of Virtual Communities

The general aim of virtual communities has been to provide more for the social aspect ofsociety as opposed to commercial activities. They focus on the actions, needs and attitudes ofpeople rather than the marketing strategies and revenue sources. They represent practices,activities, and values that distinguish virtual communities from other formats and activities(Figallo, 1998).This has generally remained the case, even as the Internet has become more commercialised.For example, non-profit organisations have been able to promote their cause on the Webusing third-party solutions.


Structure of Virtual Communities

Communities and Sub-communitiesVirtual communities are generally developed for a defined purpose. Fostering self-definedgroups is an important part of running any large-scale community, but deciding when andhow to support these groups requires careful consideration. For a community aggregator likeeGroups, Topica, or Yahoo Clubs that’s focused on driving traffic and attracting existinggroups, it makes sense to develop tool and features early on that will attract a wide variety ofsub-communities (Jo Kim, 2000).

Guidelines for developing sub-communitiesSub-communities are successful when theyserve a clear purposeWhether they’re staff-created or member-created, sub-communities will thrive if theyserve a clear purpose for the members.Make sure to provide ways for the group’sleader to articulate and express thatpurpose. This serves as an invitation.

Sub-communities need gathering places tocongregate and communicate.When you’re designing the tools andplatform for sub-communities, be sure toinclude one or more ways for groupmembers to communicate with each other.Depending on your community needs, youmight offer mailing lists, message boards,chat rooms, or buddy lists.

Sub-community affiliation should be part ofmember profiles.Sub-communities thrive when they have“tribal markers” that show group affiliation,and are integrated into each member’s IDand/or profile. Include a member roster or(searchable) group directory, so that othermembers of the community at large can seewho the group’s members are.

Sub-communities should accommodate andsupport a range of roles.Sub-communities have their ownmembership lifecycle. When someone joinsa sub-community, that person becomes anewbie; the founder is by definition andelder of the group.It’s helpful to identify how long someonehas been a member along with anyimportant roles that person plays within thesub-community.

Sub-communities benefit from strong leadership.A proactive and dedicated leader is often the catalyst thatcause a sub-community to coalesce, and makes thedifference in keeping the group lively and relevant.Acknowledge those leaders and give them tools they needto filter content and control access to the sub-community.

Sub-communities develop their own etiquette.Sub-communities sometimes define their own “localordinances,” which may include the membershiprequirements, a code of conduct, and privacy policies thatare distinct from those of the community as a whole.Make sure groups are able to create, publicise andenforce their own localised rules.

Sub-communities get stronger when they hold cycliceventsSub-communities often enjoy holding community-building events like regular meetings, guest speakers, andcompetitions. You can foster this by offering sub-communities an events calendar, a public venue, andtools for promoting, running and transcribing their events.

Sub-communities are strengthened by the rituals ofcommunity life.Sub-communities benefit from rituals that strengthentheir identity and clarify internal roles. Be sure to providesub-communities wit the mechanisms to implementrituals such as initiations, weddings and memorialservices, and also to include groups in community-widecelebrations.

As they grow, sub-communities may need to form internalsub-communities of their own.Something that community builders often forget is thatsub-communities, like every community, will need tosub-divide themselves to accommodate growth. It’suseful to provide mechanisms that allow sub-communities to define and internal hierarchy and spiltinto more focussed groups.

Table 3 Jo Kim's guidelines for developing successful sub-communities

Sub-communities have an important role in making it possible for the virtual community togrow and to represent the sub-communities that already exist within the organic community.Dedicating part of the virtual community to sub communities would allow groups that didnot become involved in the project in the initial design stages, to sign-up to the site andcreate a virtual presence within the application.


Virtual Community ModelsVirtual communities can take many forms, from being a simple asynchronous text interfaceto a virtual world represented by three-dimensional metaphors.Message BoardsMessage boards are one of the most popular models for a virtual community as they areasynchronous, meaning social actors can visit them at a convenient time and respond tomessages when they want to. Unlike synchronous methods such as chat rooms, a social actordoes not need to be in the same place at the same time to respond to the message.Chat RoomsChat rooms allow social actors to communicate with one and other in a synchronousenvironment. Unlike message boards, the discussions in chat rooms move faster in the sameway as a conversation in an organic community. The social actors are more likely to discussissues that are ‘off-topic’, but this usually allows for greater sociability.Email Lists and NewslettersEmail discussion lists have some important qualities that distinguish them from other Internetcommunication tools. Email lists are typically owned by a single individual or small group.Since all messages sent to the list must pass through a single point, email lists offer theirowners significant control over who can contribute to their group. List owners can personallyreview all requests to be added to a list, can forbid anyone from messages that they do notwant broadcast to the list as a whole (Smith, 1999).Email lists, such as ‘Yahoo! Groups’, which was acquired from eGroups provide users with aconvenient way to keep in contact and discuss relevant issues. Users do not have to go to aWeb site to participate, they wait for messages from the other users to enter their email boxand sent responses using their email client. Such a system allows the user to stay within theiroperating system or preferred email client as they do not have to learn to use anotherapplication.Instant Messaging and Internet Relay ChatInternet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat system developed by Jarkko Oikarinen in Finland in thelate 1980s. IRC has become very popular as more people get connected to the Internetbecause it enables people connected anywhere on the Internet to join in live discussions.Unlike older chat systems, IRC is not limited to just two participants (Weblopedia, 2001).Instant Messaging (IM) has become one of the most popular methods of real-timecommunication. Stand-alone applications have come out of the Instant Messaging featureoffered by America Online (AOL). Applications from AOL, ICQ, Yahoo! and MSN havebecome extremely popular and the users have formed communities of their own made up ofother Internet users they speak to. Such tools could offer an Internet-based virtual communitya big opportunity to increase their user-base, but it could also take users away from the onlinecommunity to these applications.Virtual WorldsVirtual worlds, such as Multi-User Domains (MUDs) are imaginary spaces in computerdatabases where people use words and programming languages to improvise melodramas,build worlds and all the objects in them, solve puzzles, invent amusements and tools,compete for prestige and power, gain wisdom, seek revenge, indulge greed and lust andviolent impulses (Rheingold, 2000). MUDs first came about in a British University in the1980s, since then their popularity has grown and grown, but so have the controversysurrounding the social impacts of the medium.Small Message SystemMobile phones have allowed its users to communicate with each other in an alternative wayto speaking, using the Small Message System (SMS). Though it could be debated whetherthis is a form of virtual community or not, it has allowed people to communicate on a one-to-many basis.The Nokia 3110 is an example of a one-to-many use of SMS technology, but it does not offersynchronous chat. What is preventing SMS technology from providing the synchronicity of


chat rooms or instant-messaging services is that you cannot see whether the person you aresending the message to is online. It might be hours or days until they see the message andthus SMS technology cannot be considered to be a method of real-time communication. Eventhough telephones such as the Nokia 3110 allow you to create ‘groups’, this does not makeSMS a virtual community.Social OrganisationVirtual communities have tended to reflect the organisation of the organic communities orsocial networks that they represent. This has been the case because the members are usuallyfrom a specific user group or geographical location. A community for computer users islikely to be organised by computing topics or specialised interest group, where as a virtualcommunity for a geographical area is likely to be organised by the specific locations withinthe organic community that is being represented.

Members of a virtual community usually have one thing in common: the interest that broughtthem together. They are heterogeneous in everything else. In an organic community, on theother hand, people have several interests in common, which makes such a community reallyhomogeneous. This provides the organic community with better chances of building andmaintaining its own culture and identity than a virtual community.[Virtual communities] cannot replace organic communities, because they are too limited andunstable to exist without them. However, increasingly they will become added to traditionalcommunities. A mutual improvement and reinforcement will be the real challenge for the future(van Dijk, 1999).

It is important to represent the information within the community in a logical way thatreflects the social organisation of the community. Jo Kim (2001) suggests three approachesto doing this, which assist in helping the social actor find information within the application.

Theme DescriptionCategorical Theme This is the most common and most flexible way to organise a

collection of items. It can start with a short, simple list of topicsor categories and grow from there. A categorical theme mightshow up as a list of issues, a hierarchy of discussion topics, or acollection of product groups.

Geographic Theme This is an appealing and intuitive way to get around within avirtual space. By invoking familiar models like houses,neighbourhoods, and cities, it leverages people’s associationswith the physical world.

A Media Theme Media themes, such as the department of a magazine orcollection of channels, builds on people’s familiarity withexisting media and suggests what type of content and activitiesthey can expect.

Figure 1 Jo Kim's themes for organising content within virtual communities


Growth of Virtual CommunitiesThere has been extensive research into how to make virtual communities grow. They have allproduced guidelines for how community managers can increase their member-base andparticipation in the community.

In 1999, Next Generation Research Group published their research in the Journal ofKnowledge Management, titled “Online communities: Helping them form and grow”, whichaimed to discover why some virtual communities fail to meet their expectations and whyother are managing to thrive.

Helping Virtual Communities Form and GrowInvest in the means rather than the endsInternet-based VCs, such as The Motley Fool and FastCompany, are far better at fostering member-generatedcontent than most corporate VCs, even though this is nottheir primary objective. It appears from our research thatattention to community building may well be the key:VC managers whom we interviewed, including thoseresponsible for internal corporate VCs, said that a senseof community or belonging is essential to achieving ahigh level of participation.

Focus relentlessly on the needs of membersIn successful VCs, managers and their staff areobsessively focused on the needs of members – not theneeds of sponsors, executives, administrators, ortechnologists. They devote significant time tounderstanding who members are, what work they do,where they work, what tools and skills they have, whohey work and share knowledge with, and, mostimportantly, what kinds of knowledge, tools, andrelationships they want and need

Resist the temptation to controlOutright attempts to control VCs can kill them or sendthem underground. Several managers talked about theirexperiences in trying, at the request of seniormanagement, to restrict or eliminate discussions thatwere deemed unrelated to business issues. In one case,e-mail systems and internal web sites were searched toidentify non-business uses. The senders, receivers, orsponsors responsible for the offending material wereinstructed to delete it to avoid disciplinary action.Needless to say, such actions have a chilling effect onexactly those people who are most critical to communityformation: the ones who take a leadership role inencouraging knowledge sharing, and those whocontribute something

Don’t assume the community can become self-sustainingWhere community members have a high level of subject-matter knowledge, comfort with technology, and access to asuperior technology infrastructure – the OLC appears to bealmost entirely self-sustaining. However, in most cases, theOLCs required a significant investment of time and effort tomaintain.In addition to understanding members, OLC managers needto analyze other factors that may help or hinder their efforts.One such factor is the industry in which the organizationoperates. In industries characterized by rapid change, OLCstend to be more active

Consider environmental factorsIntroverts sometimes take a more active role in on-line vs.off-line discussions, depending on their comfort with thetechnology and confidence in conveying their thoughts inwriting. By contrast, extroverts often struggled to adapt

Extend community building beyond the discussion spaceVirtual Communities are sometimes treated as synonymouswith discussion groups, but reality is much morecomplicated than that. True, discussion applications are acommon tool for many-to-many interactions.Absence of activity in a designated on-line space is notnecessarily the sign of a failed VC. Rather, it may be that thedefinition of the VC should be broadened so that all theinteractions can be recognised as potentially value-creating,not simply those that take place within a defined space.

Seek out and support members who take on informal rolesInformal roles are a good indicator of the health of acommunity. When members are willing to serve as experts,mentors, information sharers, even critics or devil’sadvocates, it indicates that that the community is somethingpeople value and want to be part of.

Table 4 How Virtual Communities form and grow

This research, as outlined in Table 4 provides very useful guidelines for both the technicaldevelopment of a virtual community and the managerial aspects. Focusing on the needs ofthe social actors by ensuring that they are able to take an active part in the community seemsto be the main message.

The research suggests that a virtual community is more likely to grow if the communityprovider supports the members, without interfering in their activities, by providing theplatform for interaction.


Lifecycle of Virtual CommunitiesResearch into the success of virtual communities has shown that those that succeed havegenerally had a lot of time invested by the community provider. However, this is not alwaysthe case, some virtual communities that have a strong purpose may still fail to take off andsupport for the ceases. Powazek (2002) has suggested that a virtual community may have toend if the site is not meeting the needs of the owner; the site is not meeting the needs of thecommunity; there is no interest in the site; money; or simply that the site has reached the endof it’s life.

Reasons to end a virtual communityThe site is not meeting the needs of the ownerCommunities are not always in a flux. Manytimes, the idea you start out with evolves asmore people get involved. If the main idea ofthe site has changed beyond your comfort orinterest level, it may be time to end.The site is not meeting the needs of thecommunityPerhaps you’re still happy with the site’sdirection, but it just hasn’t attracted theaudience you hoped for. Again there areavenues open to you here. Perhaps you needmore attractive content. Or your audience is outthere, but they just haven’t found your site yet.Or your tools are too complicated, so they’rediscouraging participation. If you’ve tried tosolve these problems with no success, you maybe out of luck. (A community site for peoplewho don’t use computers will never find itsaudience, for example).

There is no interest in the siteIf you get the feeling that you could take down the sitetomorrow and no one would care, that may be an excellentreason to do so. But remember to ask your communityfirst! They say that fish don’t know when their wet–youmay be too close to it to see its value. Remember to getsome outside advice before you pull the plug.MoneyA popular site can get expensive. Good servers and fatepipes don’t come cheap. If you don’t have the financialresources to keep your site up, as your users for help. Manycommunities have pitched in to buy new servers in times ofneed. But this can be a temporary fix. If the money runsout, you may have to close up shop.Communities don’t have to last foreverCommunity sites can be built around specific events. Aweb community devoted to discussing a hot new moviewill wane when the next hot new movie comes along.There’s nothing wrong with letting the site die gradually,as the need for it fades.

Figure 2 Powazek’s reasons to end a virtual community.

Technologies for Accessing Virtual Communities

Personal ComputersPersonal computers are the primary method at the moment for accessing Internet services.With well-designed web sites, users have been able to easily access information andparticipate in virtual communities. In order to reach a big audience, any virtual communityshould be accessible by the Web, as at present this is the main method for access contentover the Internet.Interactive Television and MSN TVInteractive Television (iTV) is a fairly new concept to Britain, which has increasing numbersof subscribers to digital television services. The British Government are trying to encouragethe take up of digital services so more people can access interactive services such as emailand the Web.Although there are other brands of set-top boxes that allow you to access the Internet, MSNTV is the most widely used and has an expansive developer support site. For these reasons,MSN TV will be used as the basis for the research into TV-based web applications.

A MSN TV system allows users to connect to the Internet easily and inexpensively through asmall set-top box, using their television as a monitor. All MSN TV systems can surf the Web;some deliver enhanced television or satellite compatibility, while one model is solely for theInternet (MSN TV Developers web-site).

Having access to the Internet via a television will allow more people to become part of theInformation Society. Access methods such as MSN TV can only access a limited number ofsites successfully due to sites being designed for higher resolution monitors.


Jakob Neilsen (2000) indicates that most Web sites work well only on a 17-inch monitorrunning at a resolution of at least 1024x768 pixels.Anything less than this and the layout of most screens become cramped, and users have toscroll to see all the parts of the screen they need. However, MSN TV requires a site to bedisplayed at a resolution of 544x378 and very few sites meet this criterion.

Screen Size 1997 1999Very Small (640x480 or less) 22% 13%Small (800x600) 47% 55%Medium (1024x768) 25% 25%Large (1280x1024 or larger) 6% 2%

Table 5 Distribution of Monitor Sizes in 1997 and 1999

The survey in Table 5 (cited in Nielsen 2000) found that the distribution of very small screensizes, which include MSN TV fell from 22% to 13% between 1997 and 1999. However, ifmore people begin to access the Internet via their television, this figure could begin to riseand web developers will have to take account of this.Internet KiosksInternet Kiosks have become quite popular at motorway service areas and airport/trainterminals. They allow users to access the Internet using a touch-screen interface providingusers with easy access to information while they’re on the move.Many public telephone boxes now allow users to send emails or text messages, this is a morelimited service compared to the kiosks and a simple WAP interface could have improved theservice to users.Mobile PhonesAnother new concept of accessing online content is the use of Internet-enabled mobilephones. Handsets based around the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) becameincreasingly popular in the late 1990s, but their ownership is still fairly low.In December 2000 the Nielsen Norman Group published a study on the effectiveness ofcurrent WAP services. The study asked twenty volunteers to use a WAP phone for a weekand record their use in a diary. They also took part in traditional usability tests at the start andthe end of the study.

Following a UK field study, 70% of users decided not to continue using WAP. Currently, itsservices are poorly designed, have insufficient task analysis, and abuse existing non-mobiledesign guidelines. WAP's killer app is killing time; m-commerce's prospects are dim for thenext several years (Nielsen, WAP Usability Report, 2000).

Nielsen is very critical of the currently usability of WAP sites, but doesn’t rule it out as auseful way of providing content. He indicates that the problems of early Web sites that representedcorporate brochures are evident in the current WAP sites, which are usually representations of theWeb versions, with no unique design.

Technologies for Implementing Virtual Communities

There has been a tendency by many Web developers to over-design virtual communities.Due to the rapid advance of Internet-related technology, Web design has yet to stand still,and there is no sign of things slowing down. New features and tools are constantly beingcreated. The expansion of HTML capabilities, refinements in Java, JavaScript, and ActiveX,audio and video streaming, higher modem speeds and bandwidth, and improved GIPscombine to transform our experience of the Web almost daily (Figallo, 1999).Server-side ScriptingServer-side scripting methods, such as Microsoft’s ASP.NET and Macromedia’s ColdFusionallows web developers create dynamic web sites linked to databases. It offers manyadvantages over traditional programming techniques as the site can be made to automaticallydisplay the most recent data, without the code being changed.


Server-side scripting is only dependent on the platform it is being run on, so long as itoutputs the correct version of HTML to the user’s Web Browser or iTV set-top-box.FlashMacromedia’s web site describes Flash as the key to designing and delivering low-bandwidthanimations, presentations, and Web sites. It offers scripting capabilities and server-sideconnectivity for creating engaging applications, Web interfaces, and training courses. Onceyou’ve created your content, 96% of the online audience will be able to view it with theMacromedia Flash Player. However, although MSN TV and version 4 or greater browserssupport Flash, not all browsers and iTV systems support it, meaning the applications are notcompletely accessible.JavaJava is a high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java is anobject-orientated language similar to C++, but simplified to eliminate language features thatcause common programming errors. Java is a general-purpose language with a number offeatures that make the language suited for use on the World Wide Web (Webopedia.com,2001).Java has an advantage over programming languages like Visual Basic because it can be runon nearly all current desktop platforms. However this compatibility does not apply to most ofthe major iTV set-top-box providers.JavaScriptJavaScript is a scripting language developed by Netscape to enable Web authors to designinteractive sites. Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Javalanguage, it was developed independently. JavaScript can interact with HTML source code,enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content (Webopedia.com, 2001).JavaScript is limited to version 3 or greater browsers and is not supported by all iTV systems.This makes using JavaScript less of a desirable option for delivering dynamic content if thevirtual community is to work on all platforms.

The Psychology of Community Members

People who join virtual communities are not simply users of an application who all have thesame needs and motives. Virtual communities should not be designed for ‘users’, but forsocial actors, who are participating in electronic environments in order to reach theirparticular goals, to assert their principals and values, and to develop their projects and self-identities (Mantovani, 1996).

Figure 3 Mantovani’s characteristics of actors interacting with an environment

ActorsThe social actors within a community are there to fulfil their specific needs and goals. Theirgoals can vary from wanting to feel part of a community to developing an online identity, butin order for an actor to reach these ‘being needs’, their ‘deficit needs’ have to be fulfilled.

interpretation

opportunities

selection

actors

environment

goals/needs

situations

interaction


A virtual community itself cannot make an actor self-actualised, but if it has a framework,such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1970) in Figure 4 that meets an actor’s physiologicalneeds and they feel safe and secure in using it, it is possible for them to eventual reach thislevel.

Figure 4 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Membership Lifecycle of a Social ActorAmy Jo Kim (2000) describes the social actors of a virtual community in terms of aMembership Lifecycle, which has five stages of membership. She claims that users evolvefrom being a visitor to a novice, regular, leader then an elder.

Lifecycle Stage FunctionVisitors Visitors are people without a persistent identity in the community.Novices Novices are new members who need to learn the ropes and be

introduced into community life.Regulars Regulars are established members that are comfortably participating in

community life.Leaders Leaders are volunteers, contractors, and staff that keep the community

running.Elders Elders are long-time regulars and leaders who share their knowledge,

and pass along the culture.Table 6 Jo Kim’s membership lifecycle model for a virtual community

Having a clear lifecycle model can assist in understanding the needs of the members of avirtual community. The model present by Jo Kim (Table 6) can help in delegatingresponsibility and tailoring the virtual community to provide certain information. Forexample, novices may need more help, whereas elders may want more customisation.Experts serve as informal leaders and are essential in creating the boundaries of discussions.While their peers may take other members to task for off-topic postings, experts arepermitted to stretch the boundaries, thus allowing the discussion to grow and change overtime. As the discussion changes, so too does the community’s idea of itself and its work. Thepresence of these experts is also one of the many draws that brings other members on-line –knowledge seekers go where the answers are (Journal of Knowledge Management, 1999).EnvironmentAssuming that the community is meeting an actor’s physiological needs, they should feelcomfortable enough to participate in the community environment. To encourageparticipation, the environment should be designed to increase sociability within thecommunity by providing community places, whilst allowing the actor to be free to achievetheir goals.

Self-Actualisation

Being Needs

Self-Esteem/Ego

Social

Security/Safety

Physiological

Deficit Needs


Figallo (1998) describes a virtual community as a place where relationships can form and bemaintained over time. The relationship must have value to the users, and they must haveroom to develop. There are many possible configurations of relationship on the Web. Theycan be between individual users, between users and content providers, between users andactual content. These needs set out by Figallo can be addressed by providing a number ofcommunity places in which a social actor can interact as well using adaptive hypermedia tocreate an interactive environment.Community PlacesCommunity places are an essential part of any virtual community. They are the places thesocial actors gather to interact with other actors, they are the hubs of the community in whichdebate is stimulated and personalities allowed to develop.There are many methods used to encourage users to interact with each other, from chatrooms to message boards. However, it is important to ensure that a particular deliverymethod is being used well in a community and not just available for the sake of it.The way the community places are used by social actors often depends on its synchronicity.Table 7 below outlines some of the community places currently used in virtual communities.A community place that is synchronous is a two-way, communication method and allowsactors to interact at the same time, whereas an asynchronous method is only one-waymeaning actors can not exchange messages simultaneously.

Place Type Purpose and delivery methodInstant Messaging Synchronous Instant messaging is usually not part of the

web interface itself, but run as a separateapplication.

Mailing List Asynchronous Used in one-to-one communications. Asystem administrator can send one email toeveryone on the mailing list via an emailapplication or a web-based interface.

Message Boards Asynchronous Allows users to leave messages for otherusers to read. Message Boards are presentedwithin the web site for users to access.

Real-Time Chat Synchronous Allows users to exchange messages witheach other instantly. Chat rooms are usuallyembedded into the web site as a Java applet,though some are available as applications tobe run independently of the site.

Virtual Worlds Synchronous Users communicate with each other in a 3Denvironment.

Table 7 Purpose and synchronicity of community places

Adaptive HypermediaAdaptive hypermedia can be used to create new situations for the social actor by changingthe content based on metrics such as their interests and what they have done before.Amazon.co.uk were perhaps the first web site to use adaptive hypermedia effectively tocreate a virtual community. Amazon.co.uk has built profiles of customers that buy particularbooks so they are then able to recommend these books to a customer with a similar profile.

Web communities that are advertising-based often need to keep track of impressions (and otherrelated statistics) for their advertisers. But you can use these kinds of statistics to shape yourcommunity as well.For example, if you’re experimenting with different ways of running your chat events, as CNNhas done, you may want to know how many people attended them, and how long they stayed.Statistics about your traffic can also help you identify your community’s hot topics, which youmay want to highlight on your front page (Jo Kim, 2000).

Profiles of the social actors can also be used to effectively target advertising banners.Although these banners are seen by some to be a nuisance, they form an important part of theRevenue Generation Model of most virtual communities.


InteractionWhen a social actor is provided with a virtual environment with situations within it, they thenhave to decide how they are going to interact with it. The main processes in an interaction areselection of which situations to take part in, and creating opportunities within thesesituations.

Situations are at least as important as actors, and interaction is more important than either. Itis now recognised that this kind of research cannot establish whether personality or situation ismore important [in the selection procedure] (Argyle, 1983).

Gaining a perception of a social actor’s personality in virtual communities can pose problemsto those that are used to interpersonal communication in organic communities. People havetraditionally relied on indications, primarily facial expressions and voice tone to determinethe personality and emotional state of another person. These indicators are not available inmost virtual communities, and therefore social actors have had to adapt the methods they useto select who they want in their social network.

SelectionIt is likely that the way an actor decides how to participate in a virtual community will bedependent on the goals they wish to achieve. As actors usually choose to join a community ifit’s members share the same interests as they do, it is likely this will be the first indicatorthey will use to select who they wish to communicate with.Successful virtual communities make it easy for members to get in contact with each other,whether these are subscription-based services or not. The popularity of a fairly new site,FriendsReunited.co.uk could be partly down to how easy it is for its users to list themselvesand find the people they are looking for.In order to have the feelings of safety and security as outlined in Figure 4 the social actorneeds also to feel that they can trust the other members of the community. If an actor doesnot trust other members, they will not feel secure in the community, even if the CommunityProvider has put all known measures in place, such as physical security measures to preventhacking, a Privacy Statement and a Member Agreement.

Member Directory and Member ProfilesMember profiles are pages that contain personal information (e.g. name, age, interests)disclosed by that particular user. With the usual indicators that people use to perceivesomeone not available in a virtual community, the member profile can be one of the mostuseful sources for social actors to determine the personality of others, especially if it containsa photograph.Many virtual communities offer its users a facility where they can search the profiles of othermembers, by name or interest. This is a useful feature that allows social actors to find peoplewith certain common interests.

Member RatingsCommunities that allow their members to trade with each other, such as action sites andclassifieds (e.g. eBay, QXL.com) often provide an option where feedback can be left aboutthe parties in a online trading agreement. Members have the option to rate the member theytraded with as well as leave a comment for other members to read and decide whether theywould trade with them. Community site dooyoo.co.uk has extended the scope of the use ofmember ratings by asking users to indicate the users that they trust. The users’ public profilesthen display a list of the users they trust and those who trust them.


Point ScoringAn area that has not been explored in great detail is how social actors score points with eachother in a virtual community and how this differs from the way they score points in organiccommunities.Research by Clinical Psychologists, primarily by those dealing with marital relationships haslead to a great understanding of the differences between the way men and women think andact in social situations. This research can be used as a basis to design a virtual communitythat allows people to interact in similar way to how they do in organic communities.

As outlined in Table 8, a man thinks he scores high with a woman when he does somethingvery big for her, like buying a new car or taking her on a vacation. He assumes he scores lesswhen he does something small, like opening the car door, buying her a flower, or giving hera hug. Based on this kind of score keeping, he believes he will fulfil her best by focusing histime, energy, and attention into doing something large for her.

This formula doesn't work because women keep score differently. When a Woman keepsscore, no matter how big or small a gift of love is, it scores one point; each gift has equalvalue. Its size doesn't matter; it gets a point. A man, however, thinks he scores one point forone small gift and thirty points for a big gift. Since he doesn't understand that woman keepscore differently, he naturally focuses his energies into one or two big gifts (Gray, 1992).

Parameter How it could be measured in a Virtual CommunityGive her twenty minutes of unsolicited, qualityattention each day.

Calculating the length of time a married or cohabiting couple chat for.

Bring her cut flowers as a surprise as well as onspecial occasions

Calculate number of virtual gifts sent.

Complement her on how she looks Difficult without physical contact, but complements in chat text could belooked for

Give her four hugs a day The number of times a ‘Send a Hug’ card is sent. Four times is a littleexcessive for the Internet.

Tell her “I love you” at least a couple of timesevery day.

Count the number of times a person says “I love you” to their partner in achat session.

Take her side when she is upset with someone. Difficult, although phrases such as “I believe you” could be searched forin chat text.

Display affection in public. Check whether symbols of love are said in a public chat room other thana private one.

Pay more attention to her than others in public. Check that the number of chat messages to someone’s partner is greaterthan to other community members.

Buy her little presents, like a small box ofchocolates or perfume.

Calculate the number of greetings someone sends their partner

Write a note or make a sign on special occasionssuch as anniversaries and birthdays.

Calculate the number of greetings sent or classifieds placed to someone’spartner near their birthday or specified event.

Surprise her with a love note or poem Calculate the number of ‘Love’ greetings sent.When listening to her, reassure her that you areinterested by making little noises.

Check for words of agreement in chat text.

Ask her how she is feeling Check for phrases such as “how are you” in chat text.If she has been sick in some way, ask for an updateand ask how she is doing or feeling.

Check number of “Get Well Soon” greetings are sent.

Let her know that you missed her when you wentaway.

Calculate number of “I missed you” or “welcome back” greetings.

Table 8 Parameters associated with how men can score points with women

Men give points differently from women. Every time a woman appreciates what a man hasdone for her, he feels loved and gives her a point in return. To keep the score even in arelationship, a man really doesn't require anything but love.Women don't realise the power of their love and many times unnecessarily seek to earn aman's love by doing more things for him than they want to do (Gray, 1992).


Parameter How it could be measured in Virtual CommunitiesHe makes a mistake and she doesn’t say “I toldyou so”

Check that chat text does not include “I told you so”

He disappoints her and she doesn’t punish him Check that chat text does not include certain negative wordsWhen she has hurt him and she understands hishurt, she apologises and gives him the love heneeds

Check for words of apology in chat text, such as “I’m Sorry”. Calculatethe number of “I’m Sorry” cards that are sent.

When he apologises for a mistake, she receives itwith loving acceptance and forgiveness.

Check for keywords in chat text, such as “that’s okay”

She asks for his support rather than dwelling onwhat he has done wrong

Check for keywords such as “can you” or “would you” in chat text.

Table 9 Parameters associated with how women can score points with men

It is technically possible to track the social actors and gather the information outlined inTable 8 and Table 9 by insisting that they specify their gender when they sign-up. Trackingsocial actors in this way and building a profile of their personality would make the selectionprocess easier for other members easier as they would have an idea of who to trust.However, the relevance of collecting this data is questionable. It could make social actorsfeel unsafe; having the feeling that ‘Big Brother’ is watching them, meaning that they wouldbe likely to leave the community.

OpportunitiesUnderstanding the ways in which social actors interact and score points with each other inorganic communities can be influential in the design of a virtual community to provide moreopportunities.

Gift Giving in Virtual CommunitiesRituals in organic communities, such as gift giving are recognised as ways of showingfriendship or love. These practices have transferred into virtual environments in the form ofelectronic greetings cards and ‘virtual gifts’.

Giving online is often make-believe and replicates the social practices that we believe weshould engage in. Thus, like children in a make-believe tea party, we demonstrate our kindbehaviour toward our fellow man, even if (and perhaps especially because) it doesn’t cost usany measurable amount of time, money or effort, it is a collection of these small actions thatmake up the social gift economy within online communities (Werry, 2000, p57).

Although Werry (2000) argues that there is little importance to gift giving, a social actor stillneeds to be motivated to send a virtual gift to someone else. This motivation may be to makethe recipient feel that the sender is thinking of them, for the same reasons that a man mightbuy a woman flowers in an organic community. Whatever the relevance or motivationbehind gift giving in virtual environments, it has become a popular practice and nearly everymajor portal on the Internet allows its users to send electronic greetings.

Online EventsCommunity providers can encourage social actors to interact by holding online events, suchas a scheduled chat. By setting a time to bring people together to discuss a particular issuemeans that social actors would be more likely to participate in synchronous activities thatthey otherwise may avoid.Asynchronous events, such as interviews can also be popular and encourage actors to visitthe community. These work by an actor posting a question in advance and then thesequestions being answered at a particular time.


Summary

For the non-profit, a virtual community serving the online public not only informs people ofits existence and activities, but serves as a communications hub between the organisation andits members. It can be designed to demonstrate the value and accomplishments of theorganisation, and to be kept up to date and accessible to a much more targeted audience thaneven the most ambitious direct mail campaign could reach (Figallo, 1998).A virtual community would clearly have advantages for the Llantrisant Town Trust and thecommunity of Llantrisant as a whole. The social actors within such a community would beable to interact online, post information about offline events and access information providedby the Town Trust, the participating organisations and other community members.Choice of Virtual Community ModelMost virtual communities use a number of models in their virtual community together (e.g.chat groups and message boards). Some models are hardware or network intensive andrequire technologies that most users don’t have. It is important to take technologicalconstraints into account in decided which methods are appropriate.

Model Main Advantages Main DisadvantagesMessage Boards Posts can be accessed at any time. Easy

to ignore undesirable content.Threads can become very long and

reading through the messages is timeconsuming.

Chat Groups Synchronous. Users can communicate inreal-time.

Post can be sent simultaneously and theuser can become lost in the conversation.

Email Lists andNewsletters

Allows a user to receive a message assoon as it is sent.

Cannot always access am archive ofmessages.

Instant Messaging andInternet Relay Chat

Allows users to chat privately andcontrol the space and topic of the

discussion.

Usually a separate application to thecommunity. Members are separated

from the community.Virtual Worlds 3D metaphors allow a user to get more

involved in the community.Requires certain hardware and software

that few users have.Small Message System Messages are received instantly. It is more of a network of users than a

community.Table 10 Advantages and disadvantages of specific virtual community models

Access MethodIn choosing methods to make the virtual community accessible by, the main issue to consideris the penetration levels of the technology. Developing primarily for a platform that is not incommon use or shows no signs of becoming part of most people’s homes would not create asituation in which the community could grow.

Access Method Practical Issues Development IssuesPersonal Computer Most users access the Internet using

this method.Nodes are displayed differently onevery platform. Not all computers

support current technology.Interactive Television At present, few people access the

Internet using this method.Systems vary, not all Internet

technologies are supported fully.Internet Kiosk Only a limited number of users will

access the site using this method.Kiosks my not have the requiredsoftware or may display nodesdifferently to a browser or TV

Mobile Phone WAP mobile phones are not used bya large number of people

Site would have to have a separateversion programmed.

Table 11 Issues affecting choice of access method


TechnologiesWhen deciding what technologies to use to implement a virtual community, the issue thatseems to be the most important factor is platform dependence. Users access the Web usingmany different access methods as illustrated in the previous section, which makes choosing asingle solution nearly impossible.

ImplementationMethod

Main Advantages Main Disadvantages

Server-side scripting Allows for database-driven websitesto provide more information. Sitesare easily updatable.

Platform dependent.

Flash Sites can be visually interactive andengaging.

Not fully compatible with allbrowsers and set-top boxes. Difficultto update nodes.

JavaScript Allows display of dynamicinformation. Runs client-side.

Not fully compatible with allbrowsers and set-top boxes.

Java Platform independent on desktopPCs.

Not compatible with all set-topboxes.

Table 12 Advantages and disadvantages of specific implementation methods


Methodology

Development of the application follows an evaluation-centred-development model based oncommunity-centred-development principals.Community-centred-development focuses on the needs of the users of the virtual communityprior to making decisions about the technology and social planning (Preece, 2001).Evaluation-centred-development, perhaps best demonstrated by Hix’s star lifecycle focuseson evaluating each stage of the development process.Hix’s star lifecycle approach adapted by Preece (2001), illustrated in Figure 5 was so namedbecause of its shape. The points of the star are not ordered in or connected in a sequence,meaning a development activity can be started at any stage.However, the various activities are highly interconnected, through the evaluation process inthe centre. Thus, this lifecycle is evaluation-centred; results of each activity are evaluatedbefore going on to the next activity (Hix, 1993).

Figure 5 Hix’s star lifecycle for evaluation-centred development

Evaluating an application at every stage, especially where feedback is received from users orexperts is a constructive way to ensure that the virtual community is acceptable, both sociallyand practically.

Making a virtual community socially acceptable is a difficult task. Social actors come fromdiverse backgrounds, all having different goals, and coming from different cultures withvarying technical experiences.

[In order to make an application socially acceptable], strong multidisciplinary research teamscomprised of social scientists are needed to lead basic research initiatives. Computer scientistswill be needed to transfer this knowledge into software design that supports social interactions,protects individual privacy, provides security, and encourages universal access (Brown, 1999).

Making a virtual community socially acceptable is perhaps more important than most Webapplications as the purpose of it is to provide for social interaction and to increase sociability.Given that a system is socially acceptable, its practical acceptability can be assessed withinvarious categories, including traditional categories such as cost, support, reliability,compatibility with existing systems, etc., as well as the category of usefulness.

Community needs assessment anduser task analysis

Selecting technology andplanning sociability

Designing, implementingand testing prototypes

Refining and testingsociability and usability

Welcoming and nurturingthe community

Evaluate


Usefulness is the issue of whether the system can be used to achieve some desired goal. Itcan again be broken down into the two categories of utility and usability, where utility is thequestion of whether the functionality of the system in principle can do what is needed and theusability is the question of how well users can use that functionality (Nielsen, 1993).

Figure 6 Nielsen’s parameters associated with system acceptability.

Figure 6 from Nielsen (1993) shows the elements that are important in assessing usabilityand system acceptability. This diagram provides a useful basis for developing a usabilitystudies for each stage of Hix’s star lifecycle.

Star Lifecycle Stage Development Activities Evaluation ActivitiesCommunity needs assessment anduser task analysis

Task Analysis Analysis of Task Analysis study.

Selecting technology and planningsociability

User Interaction Study Analysis of User InteractionStudy results.

Designing, implementing andtesting prototypes

Design Stage, Implementation Alpha Testing, Beta Testing

Refining and testing sociability andusability

Further Implementation Application Testing, Bug Fixing

Welcoming and nurturing thecommunity

Further bug fixing Follow-up studies

Table 13 Planned development and evaluation activities

Task Analysis

Task analysis essentially involves obtaining different types of information about a task(s)from different sources using appropriate methods. Task analysis is an iterative process wherethe analyst is constantly seeking to identify new information, confirm existing informationand reject false information (Johnson, 1992).

The Task Analysis provides very important information so it is necessary to have as manyresponses as possible. To encourage people to participate, all respondents will be entered intoa prize draw to win ¤16 (£10). This is also a useful way of gathering contact information togain participants for the other studies.

The questionnaire is both Web-based and paper-based. By providing the questionnaire inthese two ways makes it possible for as many people as possible to participate. The web-based questionnaire will not need to be sent out to people and can be completed by peoplewho’s contact information is not available to any of the participating organisations.

Socialacceptability

System A

cceptability

Practicalacceptability

EtcReliability

Compatibility

Cost

Subjectivelypleasing

Few errors

Easy to remember

Efficient to use

Easy to learn

Utility

UsefulnessUsability


Content of the QuestionnaireThis questionnaire aims to identify what the particular user groups’ needs and desires are. Indesigning the questionnaire, issues such as how the users accesses the Internet and theircomputer experience are particularly important to deciding how to approach the design of thevirtual community.DemographicsDemographic information provides valuable information about who would use the virtualcommunity, which is important for making design decisions. Information such as age andcomputer experience determines the level of sophistication that the site could take andinformation such as ethnic background can determine the visual look of the community.• Age, sex, ethic background• Internet access• Internet experience (eg. 1 year, 4 years)• Methods used to access the Internet (eg. PC, Digital TV)• Locations of Internet access (eg. Home, Work)• Period of time online (eg. 1 hour, 2 hours)Obtaining this information also provides a means of selecting volunteers for the otherstudies. For example, those that have Internet access via their TV or mobile phone makegood participants for the usability study, whereas those with just personal computers aresuited to user interaction study.Personal InterestsThe participants of this study are asked to check the boxes of the categories below that theyare interested in. Having this information determines what the site should contain and howinformation should be targeted.

• Agriculture • Business • Community • Computing• Culture • Education • Environment • Entertainment• Family & Lifestyle • Health • Hobbies • House & Garden• Local Government • Media • Personal • Politics• Property • Religion • Science • Sport & Leisure• Tourism • Transport

FeaturesThe demographic information provides an idea of who a user is, but it does not say what theywant from the site.Participants are asked to look at the following major web sites and portals.• Beliefnet – http://www.beliefnet.com• Genealogy.com – http://www.genealogy.com• Virtual Cardiff – http://www.virtualcardiff.co.uk• Welsh Rugby Union – http://www.wru.co.uk/• Welsh Tourist Board – http://www.tourism.wales.gov.uk• Yahoo! – http://uk.yahoo.com

Participants are asked to indicated what they use the Internet for and what features theywould like to have in a virtual community for Llantrisant:

• Chat Rooms • Classifieds • Competitions • Council Info• Email • Games • Genealogy • Greeting Cards• Horoscopes • Links • Local Events • Local News• Local Sport • Member Profiles • Message Board • Newsletters• Personalised Services • Polls • Search • Tourist Info• Town Guides • Weather


User Interaction Study

This study will look at how a sample of users interacts with a existing Virtual Communityservices. By asking participants to participate in this three-month study, it will provide anidea of how the potential users of the virtual community might go about using it.The two main providers of free virtual communities on the Internet are MSN Communitiesand Yahoo! Groups. The main difference between the services is that the MSN Communitiesrequire the user to sign-up for a ‘.NET Passport’, whereas Yahoo! Groups allow the user touse their existing email address.Data Gathering TechniquesIn order to determine the ways in which the participants use the communities in the study, anumber of techniques will be used to gather data.Metrics and Data LoggingYahoo! Groups offers an activity monitor, which is a useful too for looking at the tasks userscarry out and the ways the go about it. Such information is invaluable for deciding how tostructure the virtual community.

Metric DescriptionTask MethodsEmployed

The virtual communities in this study offer a number of different ways of carryingout the same task. For example, a member can join Yahoo! Groups by eithersending an email to the services, replying to an invite email or by signing up at thesite. Looking at how often participants use a particular method will provide an ideaof the best way to design the virtual community for the users.

Membership Levels The Yahoo! Groups model allows users to use the service without needing to sign-up to the service. This could encourage more using to join the service compared tothe MSN Communities service where a .NET Passport is required.

Profile Usage As the aim of the community is to allow user groups of Llantrisant to find eachother from wherever they are in the world, using membership profiles will providean important mechanism for this to be achieved. However, not all participants willchoose to have a profile and the study looks at how many use profiles within theirvirtual community.

Table 14 Metrics investigated in user interaction study

Focus Group DiscussionsAlthough using metrics and data logging will provide information about how the participantstechnically use the virtual community, it does not reflect their experiences of using it or theiropinions on how the community should be structured.

Application Development

Design and ImplementationDesigning a web application to support community is completely different to the ways a website has traditionally been designed (Powazek, 2002). A number of different design decisionsneed to be made to support sociability and user interaction.

Node DesignAs the application has to work with Interactive TV, the issues that are taken for granted indesign the nodes of a Web site have to been looked at in greater detail. The size of text andgraphics, the use of screen space and the way the navigation is structured must be consideredcarefully.Text and GraphicsFonts are a big issue for any web designer trying to get consistency with their site betweendifferent browsers and platforms. As all systems have different fonts, choosing a style thatwill be available on every platform is difficult, and even then choosing the size can effect theway a site looks.


The same font could look large on a Windows computer, medium on a Macintosh and almostminute on a Unix system. Designers have tried to overcome this by providing an alternativesite for Netscape and Internet Explorer, but even then problems occur as the browsers haveconverged to accepting the same standards. Fonts will be displayed at the same size onMacintosh and Windows using version 5 or greater browsers, but the standards still have notbeen implemented for Unix-based versions of the browsers.Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide a solution to the font size issue if they are dynamicallyset through an algorithm of determining the browser and platform a user is viewing the sitefrom. All browsers above version 2, including most iTV systems support Style Sheets, whichmakes them a very useful design solution.

There will be times when members of your audience won’t be able to see the fonts you wantthem to. They may be using an older browser or a speech-based one. They may have their linkcolors set to override your specifications, or they may not have the fonts installed on theirsystem (Navarro, 1998).

An alternative method that designers have used is making graphics with text on them. Thissolves the problem of font size, as it will be displayed at the same size on every browser.However, it causes further problems as graphics take longer to download and as they are sizein pixels and not percentages, users might have to scroll to see the whole site. Problems areincreased when the user is viewing the site through an Interactive TV interface where theyare usually unable to scroll the screen horizontally.Screen SpaceAccording to Nielsen (2000), content should account for at least half of a page’s design, andpreferably close to 80 percent. Navigation should be kept below 20 percent of the space fordestination pages, although navigation options may account for higher proportions of homepages and immediate navigation pages.Users access a Web Site on a number of different screen sizes, including through iTV. Thiscan create further problems, as designing a site with 80% content for the standard 800x600resolution, would not translate into 80% on MSN TV for example.With iTV services such as MSN TV, content is usually pushed down the screen and verticalnavigation squashed inwards, leading to a higher percentage of the screen being taken up bynavigation. The MSN UK web portal is a good example of content can disappear on a displayas small as MSN TV.

Figure 7 Screen space usage on MSN UK viewed with MSN TV


Figure 7 shows the first screen displayed when viewing MSN UK through a MSN TV set-up.The majority of the page was made up of navigation (shown in green), a small amountallocated to advertising space (shown in red), leaving only a small amount of the screen forcontent (shown in blue). This clearly demonstrates how Web sites that are rich in content canpose problems for some users.Linking and NavigationNielsen (2000) rules against using a multi-column layout for MSN TV sites, but alsoindicates that if columns must be used, the designer should only use two. However, the onlyexamples Nielsen has given for this is news.com and The New York Times web site, whichwere not designed specifically for MSN TV.As indicated above, Cascading Style Sheets allow the web developer to set the font size thatMSN TV will display at (e.g. x-small, xx-small). The problem that Nielsen raises about howweb sites are displayed badly because of the way MSN TV users adjust their font preferencesbecomes non-existent if web developers program their sites to override the MSN TV settings.Being able to control font sizes on MSN TV as well as other browsers that use large fonts(e.g. Internet Explorer 5) opens up avenues for greater navigation and linking controls, suchas the multi-column layouts that Nielsen is so opposed to.

Fluid links, a concept of the Xerox Corporation, is a method of proving users of hypertextsystems with more information about the content of the node that a hyperlink leads to.

As in most hypertext systems, the fluid link is indicated via a graphical mark that indicates thepresence and (optionally) the extent of the link anchor. In our implementation, this is anunderlining of the anchor text, but it could be bold-faced words, asterisks, or other marks. Liketraditional hypertext, clicking on the anchor follows the link—the destination material replacesthe current source material in the display.However, unlike traditional hypertext, simply mousing over the anchor causes a short phraseto expand from the mark, giving more information about the link and/or its destination(Zellweger, 1998, p51).

Existing technologies within current HTML Browsers offer many advantages over the Xeroxsystem. The information in the title attribute is displayed whenever the user moves themouse-pointer over a hyperlink. This provides just a small amount of information, but doesnot obscure the node’s content as much as the Xerox system.Existing Browsers offer ways to provide users with the more detailed information that isoffered in the Xerox system, without modifying the layout of the node.

For users that use disability hardware, the longdesc attribute can provide them withadditional information, such as the content of the node that the hyperlink leads to. Version 3and greater browsers are also able to use JavaScript to display additional information in thestatus bar at the bottom of the browser.Although the JavaScript method requires the users to look away from the link to the bottomof the browser to get the additional information they may want, this makes it more optional.With the Xerox system, the animation could distract users, and they have no choice as towhether they access this additional information or not.In addition, the Xerox system is hardware intensive, the animated technique of implementingfluid links is not available in current HTML browsers.

Although animation may seem unnecessary or even distracting for experienced users, it is anessential component of the Fluid UI approach. By supporting object constancy, animatedtransitions allow the human perceptual system to track changes [24]. In contrast, transitionswithout animation can be disruptive, requiring cognitive effort to reconcile their start and endstates. We take care to ensure that our animations are short but perceptually appropriate,typically around one second in duration (Zellweger, 1998, p53).

The additional HTML attributes offer probably the most efficient way of providing moreinformation to the user, as they are understood by all of today’s browsers as well as disability


hardware. The JavaScript method has its limitations as it only works with Internet browsersover version 2. In addition to supporting the JavaScript method, MSN TV offers other waysfor the user to get more information about nodes through the <BODY> tag. Programmers areable to add attributes such as instructions to provide the user with information on usingthe application.Alpha TestingAlpha testing is usually done by expert users of the application when it is in an incompletestate. This allows technical issues with the application to be identified at an early stage anddealt with before it is tested with real users. A cost effective method for conducting this isHeuristic Evaluation, a usability engineering technique developed by Jakob Nielsen.

Heuristic DescriptionVisibility of system status The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through

appropriate feedback within reasonable time.Match between systemand the real world

The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and conceptsfamiliar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-worldconventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

User control and freedom Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked"emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through anextended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

Consistency and standards Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actionsmean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

Error prevention Even better than good error messages is a careful design that prevents a problemfrom occurring in the first place.

Recognition rather thanrecall

Make objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have toremember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions foruse of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

Flexibility and efficiencyof use

Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interactionfor the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced andexperienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

Aesthetic and minimalistdesign

Dialogues should not contain information that are irrelevant or rarely needed.Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units ofinformation and diminishes their relative visibility.

Help users recognise,diagnose, and recoverfrom errors

Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), preciselyindicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

Help and documentation Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it maybe necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information shouldbe easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out,and not be too large.

Figure 8 Nielsen’s Heuristics for evaluating usability of an application

Beta TestingSoftware companies use beta testing, where a forthcoming product is released to a smallnumber of selected comments for their comments. Beta testing can provide user feedbackthat arrives in time to improve the first full release of the product, so it is highlyrecommended not just to view beta testing as a debugging method to find programmingerrors but also to set up a systematic method for collecting and analysing user commentsregarding mismatches between the software and their needs (Nielsen, 1993).Think AloudThe first part of the Beta Testing concentrates on the user’s perception of the overall usabilityof the application. Rather than just ask the user to find errors within the system, this studydetermines whether the application meets the user’s needs.

Parameter DescriptionEasy to learn How easy to learn is the system? Can user’s rapidly get started

with the system?Efficient to use Can the user use the system efficiently?Easy to remember How easy to remember is the interface?Few errors Do errors occur? Can the user recover from them easily?Subjectively pleasing How nice to use is the system?

Table 15 Nielsen's parameters for assessing system usability


Table 15 outlines five parameters that can be used to assess the usability of an application.Participants are asked to look for these factors when they are using the application when theycomplete the tasks in Table 16.

Access Level TasksAdmin Register, invite another user, browse siteLeader Log-in, send invitation, browse siteMember Search Community Records, register, browse siteVisitor Browse site.

Table 16 Beta Testing tasks for specific users

User Feedback and Logging Actual UseThis study is conducted over two weeks and involves real users using the features of the site.Using the metrics outlined in Table 17 will be used to test the effectiveness of the site andwhether certain features that have been implemented are popular with the users of theapplication.

Table 17 Metrics used to log actual use

Metric PurposeMembership Levels The number of people that joined the site.Number of times ahelp topic is visited

Determines where users are having mostdifficulties using the application

Profile Usage Determines the importance of communityprofiles to the users.

Method ofCommunication

Measures which discussion platform (e.g.Message Boards, Chat Room) is most used.

Use of ‘Circle ofFriends’

Determines the potential popularity of thisfeature.


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Findings

Task Analysis

DemographicsForty-one people took part in the study. Themajority of the users that took part in the studywere females over forty, which provided acontrast to the generally held stereotype ofInternet users being men in their twenties.Indeed, Werry (2001) indicates the fastest-growing demographic segments of Internetusers in the past few years has been womenover the age of 50. Surveys disagree to theexact numbers, but agree that this is asignificant demographic segment. Thesewomen are enthusiastic about the Internet andspend more time online.

Figure 9 Locations participants access the Internet from

Figure 9 shows that the majority of the participants access the Internet from home,suggesting that the likelihood of them access the virtual community using a mobile phone islow. However, although few of the participants currently access the Internet using theirtelevision, with the majority of people accessing the Internet from home, the potential for thismethod being adopted is greater.

Cothrel (2000) believes that it is advantageous tocommunity providers to create a version of theirvirtual community for mobile phones. Affordableaccess to the Internet via mobile devices doesseem to be the way forward, and a few onlinecommunities have developed WAP versions oftheir sites. However, based on the task analysis,and the poor usage forecasts of wireless Internetdevices, it would not be in the interests of theLlantrisant Town Trust to develop a WAP versionof the community.

Figure 10 Methods used to access the Internet

FeaturesThe participants were asked to look at a number of sites and say what they thought of themand the type of features they liked and would like to see in the virtual community.The participants who looked at Beliefnet.com had mixed views; some who were not religiousdid not find it very useful, but to some the features it provided were useful.

“I think that the prayer circles are a very good idea. The message boards are useful”

Some of the participants felt that the site could have been better organised and presented, asit was not always clear what the purpose of the site was.

“I do not like this site. It is too cluttered and the subject matter is not obvious. I would notspend any time with it”

This usability issue was important to the participants, some of who did not stay on the sitethat long because they found it too difficult to find what they were looking for. In contrast,


Generalogy.com, a site that allows the user to search for their family was much more usable.“This site is simple and obvious and the subject matter is immediately available”

An important feature on this site to some participants was the guide that helped them getstarted with searching for their family.

“I think this site provides a useful way of searching your family history and provides details onhow to go about it”

The participants who visited Virtualcardiff.com found it to be a useful site with a lot ofinformation about the city. However, they found the site not very visually pleasing, findingthe colour scheme particularly off-putting.

“I think this site is okay, but I don’t like the colour. There is a lot of useful information”

The participants who looked at the Welsh Tourist Board site were looking for large amountsof information on the country. They found the site very usable and easy to navigate.

“Apart from a very plain Homepage, I liked this site mainly because it has loads of info and itloaded very fast too!”

Being able to easily access information was important to the participants, but they did notlike being overwhelmed, as one participant was with Yahoo! UK & Ireland.

“I have used this before and find it very user friendly. However, I feel it could be a little lesscluttered”

Having information easily accessible appeared more important to the participants than havinggimmicky features. The main features they did want was search facilities and discussionforums.Areas of InterestThe participants had several common interests, varying from wanting information about thetown to being able to advertise on the site. Figure 11 outlines the interest groups that theparticipants of the study fit into.

Group Description and RequirementsBusiness These groups wanted to be able to advertise and list their name in a directory.Community Groups Groups such as the local family history society want a private space to provide

news relating to their society and discuss relevant issues.Freemen of Llantrisant The Freemen of Llantrisant are a group of individuals from across the world.

The Freemen could benefit from being part of a virtual community as it allowsthose with Internet access to come together and communicate. The communitycould also allow Freemen to access news and information about events andactivities associated with the group.

Llantrisant ParishChurch

The members of the Parish Church come from the local community.The members of the Church could benefit from a virtual community by havingaccess to information such as an electronic version of the weekly newsletterand magazine or by participating in forums to organise events. There is alsothe possibility of creating a virtual church with features such as those offeredby Beliefnet.com.

Residents and Families Though residents are from the organic community, their families might belocated world-wide.

School Pupils/Staff School pupils and staff come from the local area.Tourism & Leisure Though not formally part of the Llantrisant community, tourists are a group

that the organic community provides for and welcomes. It would be importantto ensure that groups such as tourists are not excluded from being part of thevirtual community.Leisure organisations could benefit from the community by posting eventlistings, etc.

Figure 11 Interest Groups


User Interaction Study

Membership LevelsOver forty percent of those referred to MSN joined, but only fifteen percent joined Yahoo!Groups, which makes it easy to join. To join a MSN Community the user needs to registerfor a .NET Passport, making it more difficult than Yahoo! Groups, which only requires theuser to give their name and email address.

Powazek (2002) points out that designing community spaces is different than designing aweb store or an informational utility, and the same rules don’t always apply. While it may beimportant to give users whatever they want when you’re trying to sell them a widget, in acommunity barriers to entry are a necessary part of creating a successful community space.

Referred to MSN Joined MSN Referred to Yahoo! Joined Yahoo!21 9 20 3

Table 18 Membership levels for each community

Task Methods EmployedApart from the three users registering to the Yahoo! Groups community, there was noactivity within it at all. The MSN Community on the other hand had six messages posted andsome users added other content, including photos. This suggests that once a user registerswith a site, they are more likely to become involved.

Task MSN Yahoo!Creating a thread in a message board 4 0Posting to a thread in a message board 2 0Inviting a friend 0 0Joining via the site 9 1Joining via email 0 2Posting other content such as links or photos 1 0

Table 19 Number of tasks carried out in each community

Profile UsageNearly eighty-percent of the users that signed up to MSN Communities made use of the userprofile feature, with only one of the three who joined Yahoo! Groups making use of it.However, this suggests that a User Profile feature is something that social actors may want ina virtual community.

Profile Criteria MSN Yahoo!Profile not completed 2 2Profile partially completed 2 0Profile fully completed 5 1

Table 20 Use of community profiles by members of each community

Focus Group DiscussionsThe participants of the User Interaction Study were asked to be part of a focus group todiscuss issues that affect virtual communities. Conducted using MSN Messenger and inperson.

CensorshipCensorship is a contentious issue when it comes to the Internet. The Internet has been seen asa forum of free speech, where someone can say whatever he or she wants. Opinions oncensorship become less black and white when it comes to providing content to children.Recently a court ordered Yahoo! France to prevent it’s users from accessing Nazi sites andcybercafé chain, EasyEverything barred access to gay sites amongst others.


Some members of the focus group were particularly concerned about the content thatchildren might have access to, in particular discussions on sex and gay lifestyles.

“It’s not safe for children to use the Internet. How are you supposed to know whether theperson they are speaking to is who they say they are” – Male, 60+

Should a mechanism be put in place to prevent children from accessing sections of the sitesuch as discussion groups or classifieds where potentially objectionable content is available?Technology news site, ZDNet recently exposed flaws in Yahoo! Chat that made it possiblefor paedophiles to contact children through certain chat rooms. Yahoo! believes thatcensorship is not the answer to protecting children from paedophiles, but they would removea room if it contained illegal content. Yahoo! is not alone in their belief that censorship is notthe route to take; organisations such as the Campaign Against Censorship (CAC) and TheCensorship Project (TCP) have clear objectives about keeping the Internet as a medium orfree speech.These organisations believe in banning technologies know as ‘censorware’, which issoftware that removes sensitive material.

First, censorware is designed for one person to use on “another person.” You may well haveemail software that is set up to prevent you from seeing incoming mail from people you findobnoxious. This is not censorware, however, since you control whether it operates or not.One good test for whether software is censorware is to ask: do you need a password to turn itoff? If it is designed to be turned on and off only by people in authority (who may or may notbe you), it's censorware (TCP website).

Many applications that censor information would probably fit it to this definition, includingthe Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) labelling scheme, which allows parents tocontrol what content their children access. The ICRA’s aims are to protect children frompotentially harmful material and to protect free speech on the Internet through a voluntaryscheme where web developers can add an extra line of code that a compatible browserdetects.

“A lot of the stuff on the Internet is just rubbish, it’s just filth. I don’t see why we should haveto put up with it.” – Female, 40+

Some members of the forum indicated that they would want to be able to control whatcontent they and their children access, because they would not want to see distasteful contentthat others have posted. This issue could easily be dealt with by offering members the optionto turn on a content filter. But could such a system be considered censorware or a ‘barrier tofree speech’?From TCP’s definition this is difficult to tell. The system might have to require a password tobe switched off in order to protect non-members from potentially offensive content, but itwould be optional to members meaning they could view all content if they as individualsdecided to chose that option.

“I don’t think it would be right if something I said on the site was removed, even if it containedswearing. The Internet is about free speech” – 18-25 year old

All members felt that although children should be protected, it would not be fair to imposeany form of censorship on adults. The felt that introducing a system that would automaticallydelete information with content that could be offensive would not be right, and othersolutions should be looked at.

The fact that the ICRA is now being incorporated into digital TV systems makes it an idealmethod for offering parents a choice of what content their children view. It would be so easyfor a child to join the community and view any offensive content if they entered a false age,but this could be solved by including the ICRA tags and informing parents of how toconfigure their browser.


As the members of the focus groups seem to be in favour of a form of censorship to protectchildren and an option to turn on a filter for those above a certain age, this will form animportant part of the design of the community.

If you want to reserve the right to edit and/or remove content that you find objectionable, youshould state is as part of your Member Agreement (with reference to the communityguidelines). This could include posting, Web pages, or other member-created content.If you intend to police content prepared by others, you should be clear in your MemberAgreement that you do not necessarily endorse the content left up on the site (Jo Kim, 2000).

As Amy Jo Kim points out, it is important to include these policies in the MemberAgreement along with a disclaimer to those who choose not to use the filter.

Privacy and Data ProtectionPrivacy is another issue close to the hearts of participants in the focus group. Concerns overthe way that personal information is stored would affect whether they would use a virtualcommunity or not.

Participants in online communities want reassurance that personal information, such as theirname, address, email address, topics that interest them, and so on will not be given to otherswithout their permission. They are justifiably disturbed and angry when they discover thatinformation they provided for one reason is being used for something else. At the very least, itis annoying to have your email inbox cluttered with unwanted advertisements. Explicit policiesto ensure privacy are important particularly in online communities associated with e-commerce and health (Preece, 2001).

The participants indicated that they would like the site to provide assurances in the form of a‘Privacy Statement’ that their information would not be used outside the virtual community.

Summary and Conclusions

The Task Analysis provided a useful basis on which to design the site. Users are most likelyto be women over forty accessing the site from home using a personal computer. However,as the Town Trust want the site to be accessible to as many people as possible, it would beadvisable not to concentrate on tailoring the design to one user group, but providing aninterface that can adapt to meet the needs of an actor based on their individual requirements.

The Task Analysis also showed that although social actors want there to be a lot of features,such as being able to search for their family and participate in discussions, they want thevirtual community to be usable so that these features can be easily accessed.

The User Interaction Study showed that virtual communities that have barriers to entry, suchas making its users register, are more likely to have higher levels of participation. Providingthe facility for social actors to make details about themselves available to others would be auseful way of encouraging interaction and as the content would be controlled by the actor,they may be more willing to make information available for other social actors.

The virtual community should also be designed to protect the privacy of the social actors andallow them to control the content they view. This could take the form of a content filter, suchas the ‘family filters’ used by popular search engines.


Detailed Design

Planning Sociability

The author proposes the model in Figure 12 as a basis for creating and maintainingsociability in the virtual community. The Leaders and Managers provide a link betweenCommunity Groups and the Members of the community. Their role in nurturing newmembers and encouraging participation in discussions and online events is an important partof increasing sociability.

Figure 12 Model to increase sociability within the Virtual Community

Users NeedsResearch has consistently showed that virtual communities that concentrate on the needs ofits users are most likely to grow and become successful. Some models that have attempted tounderstand Internet users, such as the Internet Values and Lifestyle System (iVALS) havetreated social actors in a stereotypical way. This model (SRI, 1999) put forward tencategories of Internet users, and identifies their needs. It suggests that only ‘Upstreamers’who are usually professionals want personalised services and only ‘Wizards’, who areusually technically competent males in their twenties, would be comfortable using a system.The iVALS model is clearly a bad example of trying to understand the needs of Internetusers as it is based on the traits of stereotypical groups. The model in Table 21 from Jo Kim(2000) is based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1970) and is a useful way of looking atmeeting the needs of all users, as it is not based on social parameters that may change, suchas occupation or skill.

Need Organic World Virtual WorldPhysiological Food, clothing, shelter, health System access; the ability to maintain one’s

identity, and participation in a virtualcommunity

Security and Safety Protection from crimes and war; the senseof living in a fair and just society

Protection from hacking and personal attacks;the sense of having a “level playing field”.

Social The ability to give and receive love; thefeeling of belonging to a group

Belonging to a community as a whole, and tosub-communities within the environment.

Self-esteem Self-respect; the ability to earn the respectof others, and contribute to society

The ability to contribute to the community,and be recognised for those contributions

Self-actualisation The ability to develop skills and fulfilone’s potential

The ability to take on a community role thatdevelops skills and opens up newopportunities.

Table 21 Jo Kim's comparison of a social actor’s needs in the organic world and virtual world

Virtual Community Community Groups

Leaders

Managers

Visitors/Members


Social InclusionThe community will have a ‘non-exclusion’ policy. Some community development experts,including Powazek (2002) argue that not everyone should be part of a specific community ascommunity itself is excusive.However, using the membership lifecycle in Figure 13 as a model, social actors will have tomake an effort to first join the community and increase their status the more they participatein the environment.

Visitor Member Manager Leader

Figure 13 Membership Lifecycle

Members also fall into three sub-categories. Novices are new members to the community andrequire assistance from other members to learn how the community works. Regulars aremembers who have established themselves in the community and take part in the events andactivities. Elders are long-time members and are likely to be Managers or Leaders.

SecurityThe security of information in the site is protected by having six levels of access. Thisensures that only members of the Town Trust can alter information and manage useraccounts as well as ensuring only those that register can post messages.Access LevelsThe users’ accounts are protected by passwords that they set themselves. It is possible that auser may forget their password, so users are also asked to provide an answer to pre-definedsecurity questions (e.g. What was the name of your first school).

Role Name Activities/Roles PrivilegesVisitor Has no real role in the community. Can browse content such as news and

message boards, but requires a User ID toadd content and view member-specificcontent.

Member Can use the site facilities. Can modify information that is linked to theirUser ID.

Manager To manage groups (or sub-communities).This includes moderating chat groups,message boards, etc.

Can add, edit and remove content that isconnected to the Groups that are linked totheir User ID.

Leader Volunteers and staff of participatingorganisations. Provide content and ensuresmooth running of the community.

Can add, edit and remove content that islinked to their User ID. Can add content toany section or category.

Administrator To ensure the community is runningeffectively and efficiently. Updateinformation where required.

Can add, modify and remove all content. Hasaccess to user details, and can change accessprivileges.

Client Provide content such as banners to promotetheir organisation and provide informationto the community members.

Cannot change content, but is permitted toview statistics of the content they provide(e.g. Banners, Links and Classifieds).

Table 22 User roles and access privileges

Tracking DataCollecting data such as a user’s Session ID, IP Address and User ID each time they use thevirtual community can be useful for ensuring the security of all users. Should a user violatethe Terms of Service of the site, evidence will exist to prove this.Although this could be considered by some to invade the privacy of users, the informationwould be secured by the Data Protection Act and would have to be dealt with in accordanceto this and relevant legislation.


Privacy and Data ProtectionPrivacy and Data Protection were important issues to the participants in the User InteractionStudy. This is consistent with other research that suggests the issue of privacy is amongst thetop concerns of Internet users. To attempt to calm these fears, the site will have a PrivacyStatement and will have built in mechanisms to allow social actors to manage levels ofprivacy.

Opt-in/Opt-out PolicyWhen a social actor signs-up to the virtual community, they will automatically be registeredfor the newsletter. They can change these options by clicking a link on the newsletter or bychanging their account options.

Ignore FeatureThe social actors that register with the site will be given the option to ignore other users thatthey have added to their ‘Circle of Friends’. This feature will be integrated fully into the siteand actors will be able to ignore other members in Chat Groups and Message Boards byclicking a link or button. This feature filters out any content, such as message board threadsand chat group posts that have been created by the ignored member and the actor will not beable to see that user’s name anywhere on the site, with the exception of the Member’sDirectory and sections relating to genealogy.

CensorshipEvery page of the site will be filtered to check that it does not contain words or groups ofwords that the Town Trust would prefer children not to see. If the page contains suchmaterial, the appropriate ICRA meta-tag is added so that the page is not viewable to childrenif parents have set their web browser to prevent them from accessing such content.The site also filters out selected words from the chat room posts and replaces them with amore appropriate word or blocks them out completely. This will only apply if the social actoris under the age of sixteen or has chosen to not have the filter disabled.

Application Design

The Llantrisant Town Trust stipulated a number of features that the application had toinclude. In designing the application, these features had to be looked at carefully to ensurethat they were practical in the context of the application.

Requirement Description CommentsAbility to SearchFreeman Roll

The Freeman Roll is record of themembers of the Llantrisant Town Trust.

The existing Freeman Roll has to bedigitised.

Access to News andEvent Information

Information on the activities of the TownTrust and current news.

The information would have to be added tothe database as individual items, asopposed the linear structure of anewsletter.

Accessible to as manyusers as possible

The Freemen of Llantrisant are locatedaround the world, so the virtualcommunity must be accessible to all thosewith Internet access.

Making the virtual community accessibleto users that will access it using a numberof different methods and solutions isimportant if the community is to grow.

Minimum input andMaintenance

Due to the limited knowledge of web-sitemanagement of the members of theLlantrisant Town Trust, the applicationhas had to be designed so that it can lookafter itself with very little maintenance.

In order for the online community to besuccessful, the Llantrisant Town Trust willhave to continue to invest time in theapplication. In designing the application,issues such as how it can be possible forweb-site to be easily updated are veryimportant.

Table 23 Requirements of the Llantrisant Town Trust


The application design is based on a three-tier structure. The user interface covers the partsof the application that create the virtual community. User Generated Content is what theusers create, which includes the contributions from the Managers and Leaders. DataCollection manages tracking data and Revenue Generation is the model for financing thesite.

Figure 14 Application Structure

User InterfaceThe User Interface is the part of the application that allows social actors to interact with thethree layers below.Adaptive HypermediaUsing Adaptive Hypermedia techniques, the user interface can be modified to provide a morepersonalised environment in which the social actors can interact and meet their goals.LanguageThe application includes a number of adaptive hypermedia features to adjust the languagedepending on the user accessing it, based mainly on the user’s age.

Age Range Language Style12-17 informal18-29 informal30-59 formal60+ formal

Table 24 Language style for appropriate age range

As the application is aimed at a worldwide audience, it is not feasible to implement a facilityto display a Welsh version of the community. This would be especially difficult as a lot ofthe content (e.g. news, events, messages) will be user generated, meaning it would have to betranslated.The application is written in the Great Britain version of English where necessary, avoidingAmerican spellings and the HTML tag, <html lang=”en-GB”> is on each page to letbrowsers and search engines recognise this.In addition, the part of the site dedicated to the Llantrisant Parish Church uses the NewInternational Version of The Bible as this uses a more up-to-date and clear version ofEnglish.RecommendationsUsing the data stored about the way in which social actors use the site can provide the basisto recommend certain features to other users. For example, if a large number of userscongregate in a particular chat group, this could be recommended to users who have justsigned in to the community.The social actors are also given the opportunity to indicate whether they think a particularcontribution from another users is useful or not. This serves as a recommendation on whichother social actors can base an opinion.

User Interface

ContentManagement

DataCollection

RevenueGeneration

Application Interface


Logo and Advertising

Navigational Menus

Navigat-ion forsection

Content Options

Help and DocumentationIn addition to providing a standard help interface, with frequently asked questions andtroubleshooting, the application also has Dynamic Help Options (DHOs), which areadditional help topics that are displayed depending on the user’s position in the MembershipLifecycle (Figure 13 above). For example, if the user is a Visitor, they will be able to seeDHOs on how to register, but will not see help topics that registered users would need.

Access Level Examples of Dynamic Help OptionsVisitor How to register.Member Help with logging-inManager Setting up clubs, adding content (e.g. news, events), managing discussionsLeader Managing content, helping usersAdmin Managing users, contentClient (Member) Ordering services (e.g. banner space, URI listings), adjusting settings,

understanding statistics (e.g. clicks, views).Table 25 Dynamic Help Options for each level of access

Node Layout and Graphic DesignThe application is designed to be used withboth traditional Web Browsers and iTV set-top boxes. This ensures the maximum numberof people can access the site.With the objectives for the application beingto provide content and to make accessing thiscontent easy, a number of issues had to belooked at in relation to navigation.In addition to designing the navigationstructure, issues such as the consistency of thedesign, the sizes and styles of fonts, and howthe size of the screen is managed are alsoconsidered.

Figure 15 Node Layout of the application

NavigationThe site is divided into the nine sections outlined in Table 26, that are selectable from the sitemenu. By selecting the menu option, the left navigation column changes to the optionsavailable for that section, which remains available for all pages within that section.

Section Name PurposeHome Introduce the user to the site and display the most recent and most

popular content.Your Community Information such as news, events and articles relating to the

community.News & Events Displays the latest news and events from all categoriesLeisure & Lifestyle Has a magazine-feel, with articles on a range of issues, such as

relationships and abuse.Discussion Groups Allows users to discuss issues using message-boards.Community Groups Allow members to create sub-communities, based on their own

interests.Freemen of Llantrisant Provides information on the history of the Freemen of Llantrisant as

well news, events and links to discussions.Llantrisant Parish Church Provides information on the history of the Parish Church as well news,

events and links to discussions.Table 26 Breakdown of menu sections of the application


In addition to the selectable sections, there are also eight additional sections that providealternative options. These make it easier for social actors to find information and navigate thesite.

Section Name PurposeAccount Options Allows the user to modify and update their details.Administrator Options Allows a user with Admin privileges to modify information on the site

and manage user accounts.Business Services Provides businesses with information on advertising servicesClient Options Allows businesses that have registered to advertise to check statistics

and modify information.Help Options Provides all users with information on how to use the community.Leader Options Allows those with Leader privileges to communicate with users and

modify their moderated groups.Manager Options Allows those with Manager preferences to modify their community

groups and communicate with members.Search Allows users to search for a number of things, such as genealogy

records and Web sites in the database.Table 27 Breakdown of additional sections of the application

Many Web sites that have more that two columns for navigation have caused greatnavigation problems for users of MSN TV as it is more difficult to move the cursor using thedirectional pad on a remote control than it is to move a mouse-pointer.MSN TV gives web developers the option to add additional attributes to the <anchor> tag,which can make it easier for using to navigate the nodes – This is done by giving each anchoran ID. By then adding the directional attributes, such as nextleft or nextright, the webdeveloper can force the MSN TV browser to go to a specific anchor, thus making it easier forthe user to navigate the site.ConsistencyAll the nodes are based on a three-column-layout. This makes it easier for social actors tolearn to use the site as section links are always the top of the node, sub-section links arealways on the left, and user options are on the right.Text FontsThe virtual community is designed to work with all Web browsers. As nearly all Webbrowsers display fonts in different sizes, a Style Sheet will be developed for each version ofeach browser so that the fonts are displayed at similar sizes in each of them.Screen SizeThe site is programmed to take account of all screen sizes, including iTV systems, which cansometimes rescale graphics to fit the screen. The tables that are used to make up the nodesare sized in percentages so that they can be expanded and contracted to fit the screen in allbrowsers. In addition, transparent GIF images, known as ‘spacers’ or ‘shims’ are placed inthe left and right columns to keep them a fixed size, allowing the size of the middle columnto adjust.Content Management SystemThe application’s integrated Content Management System provides the framework for user-generated-content and the ability for users with access privileges to modify or remove it.

Access Level Edit Content User Generated ContentMembers No Message Boards, Chat Groups, Classifieds, Prayer

Groups, RecipesManagers No Events, NewsLeaders Yes Opinion-PollsClients No Advertising Banners, Business DirectoryAdmin Yes Can modify all content

Table 28 User-generated-content features available to users


Data CollectionThe application is programmed to collect various data to enhance the interface and allowfeatures to work properly.Usage StatisticsThe usage statistics, such as banner displays and the number of times a piece of informationis accessed provide users at all Access Levels with additional information and options. Forexample, by counting the number of times a page is visited, an Administrator can know howpopular particular features are and a Member can see what other social actors findinteresting.User ActivityUser activity is tracked to calculate the reputation of a social actor. Using the author’s UserReputation Model in Figure 16, the reputation (R) of a social actor is determined bycalculating the total points (P) an actor accumulates from the actions they take and theactions taken by other social actors in relation to their behaviour.

Figure 16 User Reputation Model

Tracking the activity of social actors reduces the need of the Town Trust to intervene incommunity matters. Members who know that a negative action will be recorded may be lesslikely to be abusive, as it will affect their reputation with other community members.

Revenue GenerationHosting the virtual community will be costly to the Town Trust, meaning funds to support itwould have to be raised. The Revenue Generation Model provides them with a mechanism touse the virtual community to raise these funds to make the application self-sustaining.

URI ListingsBusinesses are given the option to have their Web site appear higher in the search listings bypaying a fee set by the Town Trust. This practice has become quite common in recent years,due to the downturn in advertising.

ClassifiedsUsers of the site will not be allowed to post advertisements in the Classifieds section that areof the commercial nature. However, business are given the option to place an advertisementin the Classifieds, which would appear above the entries posted by other uses.

Targeted AdvertisingAlthough the demand for online advertising has fallen on average, the Task Analysis showedthat local businesses would be interested in advertising on the site.

ReputationP/10 = R

Positive Action (P=P+1)Awarded when a socialactor does something thatcould be considered kindor helpful, such assending a greeting card.

Neutral Action (P=P+0)Awarded when a socialactor does somethinginfluential in thecommunity that is neitherkind nor unkind.

Negative Action (P=P-1)Given when a social actordoes something unkind,such as being abusive tosomeone.

Useful Comment (P=1)Determined by other

social actors if they find acontribution to be useful.

Unuseful Comment (P=P-1)Determined by other social

actors if they find a contributionto be not very useful.

Trusted by another user (P=P+10)Awarded when a social actor is

added to someone’s ‘Circle ofFriends’ as someone that is trusted.

Not trusted by another user (P=P-10)Awarded when a social actor is added

to someone’s ‘Circle of Friends’ assomeone that is not trusted.


The placement of the advertising banners is determined using the author’s TargetedAdvertising Framework in Figure 17. The Target Advertising Framework selects a banner todisplay by getting a banner from the database (if it matches the user’s country, age range andgender) and matching it with keywords.

Figure 17 Targeted Advertising Framework

ApplicationThe Application Layer compromises of the hardware and software used to run the virtualcommunity.

TechnologiesAt present, XML is not supported by all Interactive TV systems, including MSN TV, andtherefore the application is designed to be implemented using HTML so that it can be viewedon both MSN TV and standard Web Browsers.Active Server PagesMicrosoft Active Server Pages (ASP) is used to deliver the HTML content to the client. Thistechnology will offer greater database integration and dynamic content over client-sidetechniques.Cascading Style SheetsCascading style-sheets (CSS) can be used to solve the problem of a web site looking differentand out of proportion on various web browsers. For example on version 4 or under browserson Mac OS-based computers, fonts are displayed smaller than those that are version 5 orabove or those browsers running on Windows. By applying style-sheets to the nodes, thebrowser can be detected and the font sizes changed to make the site look almost identical ineach web browser.JavaScriptJavaScript will mainly be used to provide local information to the user. For example, the‘Greeting Text’ is set depending on the time on the client side.

Error PreventionNo matter how well ‘bug-free’ a Web application is, the user is likely to make a mistake andnot enter the correct information.User Input ValidationWhen a user submits a form, the fields will be checked to ensure they meet the integrityrules. This includes making sure the data in a number field is numeric and the fields thatmust be completed do not include a ‘null value’.Hyperlink ValidationSome of the application relies on getting information from the URI of the node. The data inthe URIs are checked to ensure the user has not entered the wrong details or modified it.

Banner selected from database

Do banner keywordsmatch page keywords? Display banner

Yes

Do banner parametersmatch user parameters? Display banner

YesSelect next

banner

No

No


Development Phase

Good estimation techniques must be applied together with good development process if thereis to be some similarity between the estimates and the project that is subsequently developed(Bennatan, 2000).

Function Point Analysis

Function Point Analysis is a way of estimating the number of person months a project willtake, based on characters of the system design, as opposed to an estimation of the number oflines of code, which reflects simply the cost of a project.

Factor Simple Medium Complex TotalInterfaces 1 * [6] 1 * [9] 1 *[18] 33Inputs 800 * [3] 0 * [5] 0 * [7] 2400Outputs 400 * [4] 0 * [6] 0 * [10] 1600Entities 198 * [4] 0 * [5] 0 * [8] 792Enquires/Reports 5000 * [1] 4000 * [3] 1000 * [6] 23000

Algorithms 17 * [8] 10 * [13] 3 * [25] 341Total Raw FP Score 28177

Table 29 FPA Matrix

Implementation and Evaluation

ImplementationThe application was implemented using Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev, MacromediaFireworks and BBEdit. The progress of the implementation was discussed at projectmeetings with the project supervisor and sponsor.Alpha Testing FindingsThe alpha testing was conducted by five usability experts, who were asked to use a HeuristicEvaluation approach to assess the application..Design and NavigationThe design of the site and how a social actor is able to navigate the site was an importantfactor for all the evaluators when assessing the site.

“This design is too text based, in this day and age, users expect quite a bit more multimedia,why no images?I like site maps, I would have liked to see one here. Very, very text based, therefore boring!”

This evaluator clearly misunderstood the purpose of a virtual community, appearing to lookat it more as an online museum than a communication environment.

“Much of the screen real estate is consumed by navigation rather than by content. May need toconsider the balance more carefully.”

This evaluator made an important point, as discussed above (p26). Nielsen (2000) alsobelieves navigation should be kept to a minimum, with content making up half of the page.However where a Web site is providing a lot of information, such as a virtual community ornews site, this ‘black-and-white’ view should be questioned.The organic community of Llantrisant is very large and has many existing sub-communitieswithin it. In order to provide the users of the site access to the information they might want,having extra navigation modules, such as “Popular Discussions” could increase theparticipation in the site and direct users to where they want to go, allowing them to completetheir goals.


LanguageAn important part of assessing the usability of the virtual community is how easy it would befor social actors to understand the language of the site.

“There are elements of repetition in different contexts; such as the term community in severaldifferent uses.”

This evaluator raised a relevant issue relating the terminology used in the site. In the site,sub-communities are referred to as “Community Groups” and the section featuringinformation on the town is labelled as “Your Community”. Another evaluator commentedabout the formats of dates, as the site displayed them in US format as apposed to the Britishconvention.

The use of terms and the way information is displayed needs to be looked at carefully toensure consistency and readability. Changing the way information is displayed based oncountry can easily be implemented by modifying the “tblCountries” table in the database tocontain the additional Adaptive Hypermedia information.

SummaryThe evaluators raised a number of valid issues relating to the usability of the application. Theissues outlined in Table 30 have to be addressed before undergoing user evaluation at theBeta Testing stage.

Heuristic Main IssuesVisibility of system statusMatch between systemand the real world

Dates are in US format.

User control and freedom User not able to opt out of providing certain information.Consistency and standards

Error prevention At the Alpha stage, there were a lot of 404 errors due to pages not beingimplemented. Some of the evaluators found this frustrating.

Recognition rather thanrecall

It may me difficult for a user to remember another user’s User ID.

Flexibility and efficiencyof use

Some system errors occur – Too many client tasks.

Aesthetic and minimalistdesign

Text-based interface may not suit all users.

Help users recognise,diagnose, and recoverfrom errors

No error page with information about error.

Help and documentation Help system not fully implemented.Table 30 Main issues arising from Alpha Testing

Beta Testing FindingsThe Beta Testing was undertaken by four evaluators from different Access Levels. Theywere asked to explain how they used the application and their options of how it is designed.

Think Aloud and User FeedbackThis aspect of the Beta Testing involved five participants using the application in order todemonstrate how users may approach the virtual community.

“There is no ‘register’ option; you have to click on sign-in and then register” – Evaluator 1

This user makes a valid point about the location of certain options. The decision to make theoption at the top of the screen ‘sign-in’ instead of ‘register’ was done to make it easier forexisting members to log-in to the community. Users who are not registered are prompted todo so when they attempt to access member-only content.


One of the evaluators found the registration process somewhat confusing, as the form did notalways explain things properly.

“It’s difficult to know how to enter the date of birth. It’s awkward only being allowed eightdigits for a password” – Evaluator 4

In addition, the evaluator that was a Freeman of Llantrisant felt that it was awkward havingto remember his Freeman Number when registering, he felt he should be able to look this up.This option was not implemented because it was felt that it would make it easy for people tofalsify their details and claim to be a Freeman by using someone else’s information. The userhas to register first before they can look at the Freeman Roll.There are features in the site that make it easy for users to use the site without having toremember information as was pointed out by one evaluator.

“I think its good that you don’t have to remember someone’s email address to send them agreeting card” – Evaluator 3

In terms of easy of use and learnability, the Beta Testers found the application to be usable,with potentially difficult tasks straightforward and uncomplicated.

“I’m impressed with the site, I’m not very computer literate and it’s quite easy to accessthings” – Evaluator 2

A number of issues such as making the registration process need to be looked at, but thedesign of the application appears to be meeting the needs of the users that tested it.Logging Actual UseThis part of the Beta Testing was conducted over two weeks and involved logging how realusers use the application. Its purpose was to look at how the users use the site and whichfeatures are most popular.

Membership LevelsAt the end of the two-week period the total number of members was ninety-nine, whichclearly demonstrates that there is need for the site. Most of the members that signed-up did soafter receiving an invitation, none of them got to the site through a search engine.

Number of times Help topics are viewed.The help feature was not used at all during the two weeks, suggesting that users arecomfortable with using the site.

Profile UsageJust less than ninety percent of the users used their community profile, making it the mostused feature of the site. This suggests that users are comfortable with providing informationabout themselves.Method of CommunicationIn total, thirty-three messages were posted using all methods. The most popular was theclassifieds feature, in which the Community Leaders posted notices for up coming events.

Use of Circle of Friends Feature.The Circle of Friends feature was not used by that many users. Over the two-weeks only tenof the ninety-nine users made use of this. However, this is about ten percent, which suggeststhat the feature could become used more as the number of registered users increases.


Discussion and Conclusions

Social Actors do not always have the skills, expertise and finance that is required whendeveloping a virtual community. The ability to form a virtual community is only available tothe few, meaning without direction from community groups, their voice will be unheard aslarge media companies control virtual communities.

Because of its potential influence on so many people’s beliefs and perceptions, the future of theNet is connected to the future of community, democracy, education, science, and intellectuallife – some of the human institutions people hold most dear, whether or not they know or careabout the future of computer technology. The future of the Net has become too important toleave specialists and special interests. As it influences the lives of a growing number of people,more and more citizens must contribute to the dialogue about the way public funds are appliedto the development of the Net, and we must join our voices to the debate about the way itsshould be administered. We need a clear citizens’ vision of the way the Net ought to grow, afirm idea of the kind of media environment they would like to see in the future. If we do notdevelop such a vision for ourselves, the future will be shaped by large commercial and politicalpowerholders (Rheingold, 2000).

However, projects developed by large media groups do not have to be a negative thing.Media companies can provide organic communities with the technology and long-termcommitment needed for a thriving online environment. Having the virtual communitieseffectively sponsored by these media companies could lead to a conflict of interest if acommunity has belief or ethos that differs from that of the media company that host them.Indeed, many of these companies include such conditions in their Member Agreement.

The discussions in the focus group of the Task Analysis and Project Development meetingsraised issues relating to the security issues of the virtual community, such as privacy andpassword protection. The focus group was particularly concerned about the use of theirinformation by the Town Trust, and the potential for other members of the community toaccess it. It is apparent that any group or individual proposing to build a virtual communitywould have to take the issue of privacy very seriously in order to create and environment inwhich a social actors feels comfortable participating in.

Collecting information on social actors can be very useful, if their concerns have beenaddressed. Companies such as Amazon.co.uk have profiled their users to try to suggestproducts to it’s users that were purchased by a customer with similar characteristics. Buildinguser profiles in a similar way to the User Reputation Model, could allow e-commerce sites totarget information based on a user’s personality and the way they navigate a community asopposed to simply their interests.

During the Application Preview Meeting (see p56), the Llantrisant Town Trust raisedconcerns over the content that could be posted by users of the community and whether suchmaterial could be removed. As research by the Next Generation Research Group (1999)suggests, by the community provider deleting or even restricting the content in a virtualcommunity, could cause it’s members to fall or even cause an ‘underground’ site that wouldbe completely out of the control of the community provider. Indeed, the participants in thefocus group expressed concerns about the censorship, suggesting that they thoughtintroducing a system that would remove content considered offensive would be wrong. Theyfelt that a virtual community should protect the interests of children without sacrificing therights of adults.

The author proposes the model in Figure 18 below as the framework for those who intend tobuild a virtual community. Based on Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs (1970), the modelindicates the areas that a virtual community provider should focus on as; physiological,security/safety and certain social aspects.


Although the community provider is responsible for providing a platform in which socialinteraction can occur, they should not interfere with certain social matters, such as how anactor forms their online identity or attempts to meet their goals. Once the community hasbeen established, it is important that providers allow the social actors within the communityto define their own moral standards and principals.

Figure 18 Adaptation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Government could have a role in providing community groups with the means to develop avirtual community for purposes of economic development. Virtual communities have beenproven to be an ideal way of keeping citizens informed of local events and how they canparticipate in community projects. However, it is important that government intervention iskept to a minimum, and that organic communities have the freedom to develop a communitythat meets their needs.

Virtual Communities will undoubtedly become an accepted part of people’s lives. IndeedBTexact Technologies (2002) predict that most organic communities will have a virtualequivalent by 2016. The Internet, in what ever form it takes, offers organic communitiessignificant opportunities to express themselves in Hyperspace and to raise and discuss localissues important to them.

Self-Actualisation

Being Needs

Self-Esteem/Ego

Social

Security/Safety

Physiological

Deficit Needs

Role of CommunityProvider


Limitations and recommendations

Had the application been built with XML, it would have been easier to create a cross-platform interface. XML in conjunction with XSL (extensible style sheets) would have mademaking a WAP version of the site more of a realistic propositionThrough developing the virtual community, the sub-communities of Llantrisant now have aplatform on which they can achieve their online goals. This online environment can only goso far to providing a framework for sociability; social policy must continue to be changed bythe community itself, without direct intervention from the Trust.Recommendations for SponsorThe role for the Trust now is to maintain and nurture the community and to ensure that itcontinues to meet the needs of the social actors that participate within it. In order for thecommunity to grow and continue the Trust will have to ensure that Community Leaderscontinue to add content to the site.Recommendations for Future ResearchThere were many issues raised during this report and the development of the virtualcommunity, some of which could be investigated further.User Behaviour and Recommendation SystemsUnderstanding the behaviour of users could be useful for creating user interfaces that adaptdepending on the actions of a user. In the application, the ‘Hot’ topics are based onpopularity of particular aspects of the site using the data of all users. Existing models forprofiling Internet users are often based on stereotypical ideas of what users do when usingWeb services. Systems that are based on a profile of the individual user, compared with otherusers could provide the user with more a personalised interface and accurate information,such as recommendations.Community Development and RegenerationIt is possible that virtual communities could be used to regenerate organic communities usingtechniques used in Groupware and Computer Supported Collaborative Working. Virtualcommunities present the opportunity for members of organic communities to discuss issuesin online discussion forums, which could then be used by the appropriate bodies to bettermeet the needs of these communities.


Appendix I – Evaluation Raw Data

Alpha Testing

Visibility of system statusError A1.1 Several sections have the note "text here"Error A1.2 Initial “Home Page” does not give an introduction for first time visitorsError A1.3 How can the user’s place of birth be international?Error A1.4 How were the top level tabs arrived at?Error A1.5 Some links behave quite slowly. However, it is always possible to see which

context you are in.Match between system and the real worldError A2.1 I guess it only has one religious building – church but no chapel or mosque etc?Error A2.2 Not sure why there is a separate my community and community groups.Error A2.3 Date is American format (dd/mm/yyyy) not UK format (mm/dd/yyyy).Error A2.4 United Kingdom not available as country – labelled as “Great Britain”.User control and freedomError A3.1 Asks for a date of birth when it indicates it is required optionally for genealogyConsistency and standardsError A4.1 Notices in the Church section takes user to classifieds sectionError preventionError A5.1 Multiple “404 Not Found” errors.Recognition rather than recallError A6.1 Would take a bit of getting used to – not sure where to start or what to do!Error A6.2 In add a member to my friends – I seem to need to remember their name – why

can’t I pick from list?Error A6.3 There are elements of repetition in different contexts; such as the term

community in several different uses.Flexibility and efficiency of useError A7.1 Once I have selected an option under churches how do I then get back to latest

news – but clicking on tab again – not intuitive?Error A7.2 Not quite sure how useful an online guidebook to the church is? Prints OK – but

irritating to print several separate pages.Error A7.3 Too may functions. Will people actually want to use all this functionality?Aesthetic and minimalist designError A8.1 The design is too text basedError A8.2 Much of the screen real estate is consumed by navigation rather than by content.

May need to consider the balance more carefully.Error A8.3 White text in red headers is hard to read, and too small for proper legibility.Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errorsError A9.1 Only default error pages appear – no custom error page for server errorsHelp and documentationError A10.1 Microsoft server errors occur


Beta Testing

Thinking AloudEvaluator 1 (Admin)Comment B1.1 Looking for how to register. Clicking on sign-inComment B1.2 I’m not a member, clicking on link.Comment B1.3 Entering my name.Comment B1.4 Entering address.Comment B1.5 I don’t know my Freeman Number.Comment B1.6 Entering my date of birthComment B1.7 Entering a username; thinking of a password.Comment B1.8 Clicking on ‘Join’.Comment B1.9 It worked. Going to the home page. Looking to see if there’s an

introduction to Llantrisant.Comment B1.10 I’m looking at a list of things happening in Llantrisant.Comment B1.11 I’m looking to see what ‘Your Community’ is about, looking for a history

section.Comment B1.12 Looking at the Discussion Groups.Comment B1.13 Looking what’s in the Freeman section. There’s not much there.Comment B1.14 Looking at the Parish Church section. There quite a lot of information here.Comment B1.15 Going back to the home page. Clicking on an article.Comment B1.16 It was written by Howard, clicking on his name.Comment B1.17 This is his ‘community profile’, reading his family history.Comment B1.18 Adding him to my ‘Circle of Friends’.Comment B1.19 Typing in the opinion boxComment B1.20 Clicking the submit button.Comment B1.21 Going back to the home page, looking for the Freeman Roll.Comment B1.22 Typing in my family name, searching for father.Comment B1.23 Clicking on ‘Search’Comment B1.24 There are no entries in the Freeman Roll, my father won’t be happy! There

are two entries in the Member Directory, clicking on ‘View Records’Comment B1.25 Clicking on someone’s profileComment B1.26 Clicking back, clicking on my profile.Evaluator 2 (Leader)Comment B2.1 I’m looking at the “Llantrisant Parish Church’ section.Comment B2.2 Clicking on ‘Partners in Prayer Update’ news itemComment B2.3 Clicking on ‘chris_burr’, looking to see if it will give me more information

on himComment B2.4 Clicking on the ‘View from the Vicarage’ linkComment B2.5 Looking at the ‘Features’ section, clicking on an article I wroteComment B2.6 I’m looking at the Visitors guideComment B2.7 I’m clicking on the ‘Notice Board’Comment B2.8 Clicking on one of the noticesComment B2.9 Now I’m going to sign-in, looking for the sign in link.Comment B2.10 I’m entering my username and password, clicking ‘sign-in’Comment B2.11 I’m signed in, now I’m looking for the ‘Leaders Options’Comment B2.12 I’m looking for how to invite someone to joinComment B2.13 Clicking on the link, entering ‘Maz’, entering her email address.Comment B2.14 Clicking on ‘Invite’Comment B2.15 Now I’m going to see if I can find myself in the Parish Register, clicking

on ‘Llantrisant Parish Church’, clicking on ‘Search’.Comment B2.16 I’m entering my first name, entering my second name, clicking on ‘Search’Comment B2.17 There are 0 records in the Parish Register, but there is one in the Member

Directory, clicking on ‘View Records’.


Comment B2.18 Clicking on the link, I think this will go to my profile.Comment B2.19 I’m now going to look for Chris’ profile to add him to my Circle of

Friends, going back to the SearchComment B2.20 Typing in Chris’ name, clicking on Search.Comment B2.21 Clicking on his profile, clicking on ‘Add me to your Circle of Friends’Comment B2.22 Typing in something, selecting this is a compliment, clicking on ‘Add’Comment B2.23 I can see that he is now in my listEvaluator 3 (Member)Comment B3.1 Clicking on the ‘sign-in’ option.Comment B3.2 Entering my username and password, clicking on ‘sign-in’.Comment B3.3 I’m going to send my partner a card, clicking on ‘Your Community’

looking for ‘Greetings Cards’.Comment B3.4 Clicking on the link, Clicking on ‘South Wales’.Comment B3.5 I think I’ll pick this oneComment B3.6 I’m typing in his name, typing in his usernameComment B3.7 Erm, what shall I say…Comment B3.8 Changing the colour, to pink.Comment B3.9 Clicking on ‘Preview’Comment B3.10 Clicking on ‘Send’Comment B3.11 It’s sentComment B3.12 Clicking on ‘Sign Out’Comment B3.13 On top of the page it says ‘see you soon’!Evaluator 4 (Visitor)Comment B4.1 Clicking on link, looking for the Freemen of Llantrisant.Comment B4.2 Clicked on First Name box and typing in nameComment B4.3 Clicking on Country, looking for Wales, clicking on WalesComment B4.4 Clicking on ‘Search’Comment B4.5 I have to sign-in to view the records. Looking for ‘sign-in’, clicking on

sign-in.Comment B4.6 I’m not a member of this community. Clicking on link.Comment B4.7 Clicking on ‘First Name’. Entering my name.Comment B4.8 Clicking on male, I am male aren’t I!Comment B4.9 Entering my date of birth. Entering town of birth. Selecting country, Wales.Comment B4.10 Entering a user name. Entering password. Its not letting me type it all.Comment B4.11 Selecting a question and typing an answer.Comment B4.12 Clicking on ‘Join’Comment B4.13 Passwords not the same. Retyping passwords.Comment B4.14 Clicking on ‘Join’User FeedbackEvaluator 1 (Admin)Comment B6.1 There is no ‘register’ option; you have to click on sign-in and then register.Comment B6.2 You have to know your Freeman number at the time you register. You

should be able to look it up.Evaluator 2 (Leader)Comment B7.1 I’d like to be able to update the services. They are changing May 5th.Comment B7.2 I’m impressed with the site, I’m not very computer literate and it’s quite

easy to access things.Evaluator 3 (Member)Comment B8.1 I think the site’s nice. It’s got personal things on there. It’s friendly.Comment B8.2 I think its good that you don’t have to remember someone’s email address

to send them a greeting card.Evaluator 4 (Visitor)Comment B9.1 It is complicated having to sign-in to view the records.Comment B9.2 It’s difficult to know how to enter the date of birthComment B9.3 It’s awkward only being allowed eight digits for a password.


Appendix II – Project Status Reports

July-2001 to Sep-2001 – Background

Red FlagsNo Red Flags.Activities during the report periodInvestigations of the various models of representing a community on the Internet werelooked at and issues relating to the sociability were explored.Activities planned for the next report periodConduct Task Analysis and User Interaction Study.Problems/IssuesNo Problems/Issues.

Oct-2001 to Dec-2001 – Research Report

Red FlagsNo Red Flags.Activities during the report periodTask Analysis, User Interaction StudyActivities planned for the next report periodAnalyse research and make recommendations for design of the virtual community.Problems/IssuesThere were problems initially with the online research after the Nimda worm infected theUniversity’s server (www.comp.glam.ac.uk). As the university’s server would be unavailablefor sometime, the research was moved to an external server.

Dec-2001 to Jan-2002 – Research Analysis Report

Red FlagsNo Red Flags.Activities during the report periodThe research was looked at and the needs of the participants assessed.Activities planned for the next report periodUsing the findings of the research, the application will be designed.Problems/IssuesNo Problems/Issues.


Jan-2002 to Feb-2002 – Design

Red FlagsNo Red Flags.Activities during the report periodBased on the research, and design requirements from the Town Trust, the application wasdesigned.Activities planned for the next report periodImplement the application. Alpha Testing, Beta Testing, Application testingProblems/IssuesNo Problems/Issues.

Jan-2002 to Apr-2002 – Implementation and Testing

Red FlagsProblems with the Server need to be addressed.Activities during the report periodThe majority of the application was implemented. The Alpha Testing was conducted andidentified a number of issues realating to the usability of the site. Most of these wereaddressed, with particular attention to making the site ‘speak the users language’. The BetaTesting w, Application testingActivities planned for the next report periodFurther implementation and bug testing.Problems/IssuesNo Problems/Issues

Apr-2002 – Final Report

Red FlagsFreeman Roll still not fully implemented.Activities during the report periodDuring this period part of the application that were not implemented were worked on.Invitations to join the community were sent out to users on message boards who werethought to have an interest in Llantrisant and genealogy in Wales.Activities planned for the next report periodThere will not be another report. However Jonathan Bishop will continue development of theprototype and attempt to make it a fully working application.Problems/IssuesNo Problems/Issues


Appendix III – Project Status Meetings

24/09/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that he had completed the background reading to the project. Healso reported that the Task Analysis had been put on the web, but was not active due to theeffects of the Nimda worm on the university server.

01/10/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the research had been put on an external server due to thecontinued problems with the University server.

08/10/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that a new article had been put in the Llantrisant and PontypriddObserver, informing people that the site is now up and running.

15/10/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that he was having problems with the new host of the site and thisissue was being looked into.

22/10/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that progress was being made on the research. He also indicatedthat two assembly members, who contributed to the research, now supported the project.

29/10/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that there was little change in the direction of research activity.

13/11/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the project was stalled due to problems with the hard disk onhis laptop. This issue was being dealt with. It was agreed to hold meetings once a monthinstead of weekly.

10/12/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the research data collecting phase was now complete.


17/12/2001

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that progress was being made on the implementation with theproject. He indicated that there were many technical issues that needed to be addressed,particularly with the use of HTML tables in order to make the site work with all WebBrowsers.

07/01/2002

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that progress was being made on implementing user-generatedcontent features, including message boards, classifieds and prayer groups.

28/01/2002

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the Alpha Testing phase had commenced.

25/02/2002

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the Alpha Testing phase was completed and all evaluators hadsubmitted their reports. He also reported that the server problems continued, but these werebeing looked at.

08/03/2002

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the Beta Testing had commenced. He reported that informedthe participants of the Task Analysis and the User Interaction Study that the prototype waslive.

18/04/2002

Present: Geoff Elliott, Jonathan BishopJonathan Bishop reported that the Beta testing had been completed and the observations anddata from the prototype were being looked at.


Appendix IV – Project Development Meetings

December 2001 – Project Requirements Meeting

Present: Jonathan Bishop, Noel Israel, Howard Thomas.

The meeting opened with Jonathan Bishop explaining the requirements of his degree project,indicating that these would have to be considered carefully in coming to a decision on therequirements of the Town Trust.

Howard Thomas explained that the Town Trust had four objectives for the virtual communitythat they expected to be met:• Ability to search the Freeman Roll• Access to News and Event information• Accessible to as many people as possible• Minimum input and maintenance

Jonathan Bishop told the meeting that it was possible to meet these objectives, but said thathe did not think that it was necessarily in the best interest of the Town Trust to attempt tomake the application self-sustaining, suggesting that the Web site might be more successfulwith greater involvement.

April 2002 – Application Preview Meeting

Present: Jonathan Bishop, Noel Israel, Dean Powell, Howard Thomas

Jonathan Bishop gave a demonstration of the application and outlined what needed to bedone. He indicated that there was scope for a lot of historical information about the Freemenand the town, but this information would have to be provided by the Town Trust and theother participating organisations.Howard Thomas agreed to provide the Freeman Roll within the following week so that theCommunity Records feature could be completed. Noel Israel indicated that he would getinformation for the site from the local Family History Society.

Dean Powell was concerned with the possibility of inflammatory material being posted onthe site, and who would have the responsibility for such information being posted. He raisedconcerns of the ‘Circle of Friends’ feature as it allows a user to leave bad comments aboutanother user, which would be displayed on their profile. He referred to the Friends Reunitedcase in which an ex-pupil of being a paedophile accused a teacher. It was agreed that suchinformation would not be made available for all users to see, but limited to the individualusers.

Howard Thomas was concerned about the ease of adding records to the system, a feature thatwasn’t implemented. Jonathan Bishop indicated that this would involve completing a ‘form’in the ‘Admin’ section.Howard Thomas indicated the importance of users only being able to view limitedinformation from the Freeman Roll (Name, Date of Birth, Freeman Number, etc). He alsoraised issues relating to access privileges and the Access Levels were explained by JonathanBishop.


Tables and Figures

TABLE 1 PROJECT OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................5TABLE 2 OUTLINE OF ACTIVITIES DURING THE PROJECT PERIOD...........................................6TABLE 3 JO KIM'S GUIDELINES FOR DEVELOPING SUCCESSFUL SUB-

COMMUNITIES...................................................................................................................................8TABLE 4 HOW VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES FORM AND GROW......................................................11TABLE 5 DISTRIBUTION OF MONITOR SIZES IN 1997 AND 1999................................................13TABLE 6 JO KIM’S MEMBERSHIP LIFECYCLE MODEL FOR A VIRTUAL

COMMUNITY ....................................................................................................................................15TABLE 7 PURPOSE AND SYNCHRONICITY OF COMMUNITY PLACES.....................................16TABLE 8 PARAMETERS ASSOCIATED WITH HOW MEN CAN SCORE POINTS WITH

WOMEN..............................................................................................................................................18TABLE 9 PARAMETERS ASSOCIATED WITH HOW WOMEN CAN SCORE POINTS

WITH MEN.........................................................................................................................................19TABLE 10 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SPECIFIC VIRTUAL

COMMUNITY MODELS ..................................................................................................................20TABLE 11 ISSUES AFFECTING CHOICE OF ACCESS METHOD....................................................20TABLE 12 ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SPECIFIC IMPLEMENTATION

METHODS..........................................................................................................................................21TABLE 13 PLANNED DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION ACTIVITIES ...................................23TABLE 14 METRICS INVESTIGATED IN USER INTERACTION STUDY......................................25TABLE 15 NIELSEN'S PARAMETERS FOR ASSESSING SYSTEM USABILITY...........................28TABLE 16 BETA TESTING TASKS FOR SPECIFIC USERS...............................................................29TABLE 17 METRICS USED TO LOG ACTUAL USE...........................................................................29TABLE 18 MEMBERSHIP LEVELS FOR EACH COMMUNITY........................................................32TABLE 19 NUMBER OF TASKS CARRIED OUT IN EACH COMMUNITY ....................................32TABLE 20 USE OF COMMUNITY PROFILES BY MEMBERS OF EACH COMMUNITY.............32TABLE 21 JO KIM'S COMPARISON OF A SOCIAL ACTOR’S NEEDS IN THE

ORGANIC WORLD AND VIRTUAL WORLD ..............................................................................35TABLE 22 USER ROLES AND ACCESS PRIVILEGES .......................................................................36TABLE 23 REQUIREMENTS OF THE LLANTRISANT TOWN TRUST ...........................................37TABLE 24 LANGUAGE STYLE FOR APPROPRIATE AGE RANGE................................................38TABLE 25 DYNAMIC HELP OPTIONS FOR EACH LEVEL OF ACCESS........................................39TABLE 26 BREAKDOWN OF MENU SECTIONS OF THE APPLICATION.....................................39TABLE 27 BREAKDOWN OF ADDITIONAL SECTIONS OF THE APPLICATION........................40TABLE 28 USER-GENERATED-CONTENT FEATURES AVAILABLE TO USERS .......................40TABLE 29 FPA MATRIX..........................................................................................................................43TABLE 30 MAIN ISSUES ARISING FROM ALPHA TESTING..........................................................44

FIGURE 1 JO KIM'S THEMES FOR ORGANISING CONTENT WITHIN VIRTUALCOMMUNITIES.................................................................................................................................10

FIGURE 2 POWAZEK’S REASONS TO END A VIRTUAL COMMUNITY. .....................................12FIGURE 3 MANTOVANI’S CHARACTERISTICS OF ACTORS INTERACTING WITH

AN ENVIRONMENT.........................................................................................................................14FIGURE 4 MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS................................................................................15FIGURE 5 HIX’S STAR LIFECYCLE FOR EVALUATION-CENTRED DEVELOPMENT .............22FIGURE 6 NIELSEN’S PARAMETERS ASSOCIATED WITH SYSTEM

ACCEPTABILITY..............................................................................................................................23FIGURE 7 SCREEN SPACE USAGE ON MSN UK VIEWED WITH MSN TV..................................26FIGURE 8 NIELSEN’S HEURISTICS FOR EVALUATING USABILITY OF AN

APPLICATION...................................................................................................................................28FIGURE 9 LOCATIONS PARTICIPANTS ACCESS THE INTERNET FROM...................................30FIGURE 10 METHODS USED TO ACCESS THE INTERNET.............................................................30FIGURE 11 INTEREST GROUPS.............................................................................................................31FIGURE 12 MODEL TO INCREASE SOCIABILITY WITHIN THE VIRTUAL

COMMUNITY ....................................................................................................................................35FIGURE 13 MEMBERSHIP LIFECYCLE ...............................................................................................36FIGURE 14 APPLICATION STRUCTURE .............................................................................................38FIGURE 15 NODE LAYOUT OF THE APPLICATION.........................................................................39


FIGURE 16 USER REPUTATION MODEL ............................................................................................41FIGURE 17 TARGETED ADVERTISING FRAMEWORK ...................................................................42FIGURE 18 ADAPTATION OF MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS............................................47


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p363Gray, John (1992) Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus Harper Collings

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p210Maslow, Abraham (1970) Motivation and Personality Harper & Row; p56Mantovani, Giuseppe (1996) New Communication Environments Taylor & Francis; p8Mosley, Daniel; Client-Server Software Testing on the Desktop and The Web, Prentice HallNielsen, Jakob (2000) Designing Web Usability, New Riders Publishing; p22, pp27-28, p356Nielsen, Jakob (2000) WAP Usability Report, Nielsen Norman GroupNielsen, Jakob (1997) The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups, Nielsen Norman GroupNielsen, Jakob (1995) Multimedia and Hypertext Morgan KaufmannNielsen, Jakob (1993) Usability Engineering Morgan Kaufmann; pp222-223, pp280-281Navarro, Ann (1999) Effective Web Design Sybex; p332Novak, Jeannie (1998) Maintaining and Updating Dynamic Web Sites, John Wiley & Sons

LtdPreece, Jenny (2001) Online Communities: Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, John

Wiley & Sons Ltd; p104Powazek, Derek (2002) Design for Community, New Riders Publishing; p168Rheingold, Howard (2000) The Virtual Community, MIT PressSmith, Marc (2000) Communities in Cyberspace Routledge; p5SRI (1999) Psychographic profiling of Internet users SRIWellman, B (1997) Culture of the Internet Lawrence Erlbaum Publishing; p179Werry, Chris (2001) Online Communities Hewlett-Packard Professional Books; p66

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Proceeding of Hypertext’98 June (20-24)

bsc(hons) dissertation with distinction - a pre-friendster social networking service for llantrisant

Documents

purpose of virtual communities

growth of virtual communities

virtual communitysponsored

virtual worlds

virtual community models

community places

internet relay chat

membership lifecycle