Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability (Paperback)

~ (Author) "This tour introduces readers to online communities for health, education, and e-commerce..." (more)
Key Phrases: online community developers, listserver community, high skill retention, Quiz Bowl, Down Syndrome, Further Reading (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If the phrase "planned community" makes you think of terrible homogenous suburbs, take another look at the Internet. Although there are unplanned aspects and emergent behaviors, every detail for the most part has been designed by people who thought that they knew what they were doing. Might we do better? Human-computer interactions expert Jenny Preece takes apart our preconceptions and suggests new ways to improve our virtual realities in Online Communities: Designing Usability and Supporting Sociability. Part sociological review, part design manual, the book is dry enough to appeal to techies and academics, but humanistic enough to touch the organizers and activists who will put her ideas further into action. Beginning with basic concepts of community and online activities, Preece moves on to survey research on the use of virtual spaces, and then focuses on techniques to design and build optimal cybervillages for given needs and people. By using plenty of examples and case studies from actual Web sites and other electronic communities, she sheds light on tools that work to make them sustainable. Whether the current generation of e-planners will heed her words--and whether they can create something livable out of the weird suburb/wilderness hybrid that we have now--will be the key to determining how 21st-century humans live, work, and communicate. --Rob Lightner

Review

"provides a good balance between theory and practise"   (Software Focus, December 2001)

"I like the slightly zany drawings"  "People will say I wish I'd had this book before now"."   (Computer & Education, No. 36, 2001)

"…an excellent book…my best recommendations…" (Jnl of Computing and Information Technology, March 2003)

.....a great contribution.....The Internet is, after all, the center of virtual culture; everyone now needs to know about it.-- -- John M. Carroll, Virginia Tech

Anyone interested in growing virtual communities would benefit from this well-researched and well-thought-out exposition of the human interface and social issues underlying virtual community design. Jenny Preece provides an important perspective on social cyberspace that has not been available before the social infrastructure provided by thoughtful user interface design.-- -- Howard Rheingold, Author of The Virtual Community

Preece's book is especially important in three ways. First, it focuses on the important and pervasive growth of Internet communities. Second, it presents a comprehensive user-oriented approach for designing online communities. Third, it applies a variety of methods to test and analyze her ideas.-- -- Ronald E. Rice, Rutgers University

This is the first book that I am aware of that really focuses on the issues of usability and software design of online communities... an excellent organization and mix of topics to address this increasing important area of research and development.-- -- Jean Gasen, Capital One Services Inc.

Who should read this book? Clearly, developers of next-generation virtual community tools, services and applications should adopt this as their bible. The struggle for the soul of cyberspace has begun, and Preece goes a long way toward opening up this process.-- -- From the Foreword by Doug Schuler, Seattle Community Network

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471805998
• ISBN-13: 978-0471805991
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #725,469 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars little practical or academic value, April 21, 2001

By	Philip Greenspun (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I turned to this book looking for (a) ideas to improve my own online community (photo.net), and (b) ideas to teach to my students at MIT. I was disappointed on both counts. Preece has a long section on online education but misses a main advantage: new opportunities for people to teach (the offline world already has a lot of opportunities for learning at any time of day or night). Preece talks about what she calls "technology". The mention of VRML in a book published in 2000 will please nostalgia buffs. But there is no discussion of the role of the relational database management system. Preece uncritically quotes various scholars of the female experience online, dwelling on the alleged fact that revealing oneself to be a woman is a passport to ill treatment (in fact, our experience on photo.net is that women who ask questions are answered more promptly and treated more gently if they violate community norms such as "search before you post").

You'll learn a lot more from surfing the Web site of Amitai Etzioni, the world's leading offline communitarian sociologist, than from reading this book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A comprehensive guide to online communities, October 12, 2000

By	Dorine C Andrews (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This extremely well documented book brings readers up to date with all we know about online communities (except for their economics). Preece's concept of community-centered design takes a big step toward bringing systemization and structure to the free wheeling world of online development. Business people will find many helpful "how to" guides, techniques and examples for community needs analysis, design, testing, monitoring and evaluation. Academics will relish her study documentation, references, articulation of continuing issues and recommendations for further reading. Students can learn much from the well documented case studies of several different online community applications.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sociology of the Internet, September 3, 2002

By	Z*lda (Dubuque, IA USA) - See all my reviews

I thought this book was GREAT! Sure, it's dated, but every book about the Internet dates quickly. That's because the Internet is growing and changing faster than the book publishing business can publish a book.

The author takes us through many aspects of community building and group dynamics point-by-point. I had to take notes, I found it so useful. Ideas are taken from sociology and applied to the Internet. Dry in parts, yes, but very useful as far as clarifying one's ideas about online communities.

As the manager of a small women's community online, I found this book very useful. Much more practical than Amy Jo Kim's similar book, which mainly focuses on the monster-sized for-profit communities.

The ideas in this book can be applied to any size online community. It's clear thinking will help you understand participant/leader roles in order to delegate responsibility. There are also wonderful hints for keeping a community thriving and successful.