HCI International 2003 Crete, Greece, June 22-27 T1: Online Communities Full Day Tutorial Jennifer Preece, Chadia Abras University of Maryland Baltimore County Objectives: This tutorial provides a broad introduction to the research and development practices involved in creating successful online communities. After completing this tutorial you should: Be able to discuss research that impacts the design, management and success of online communities (part 1); Be aware of different software architectures for supporting online communities and know the pros and cons of using two well-known freeware bulletin board systems (part 2); Know what is involved in participatory community development, and be able to evaluate usability and sociability of the design (part 3); Be aware of management challenges for moderating and supporting an evolving online community (part 3); Be able to discuss the differences between health, education and business online communities and how these differences impact development and management of these communities (part 4). Content and Benefits: The content for the day will be split into 4 parts. Each part will contain activities that involve participants in small groups. Morning part 1: Review of key research findings about developing and managing online. communities. This review focuses on topics that directly address the question: what makes an online community successful? This review will provide a foundation for the discussion and activities that follow during the rest of the day. Some topics that will be covered include: the purpose of online communities, communication and conflict online, identity, social presence and awareness, participation and lurking, empathy and trust. Benefits: It would take months to find and synthesize this information unless you are working in this area. Morning part 2: What to look for in software to support online communities. We will briefly review the different types of software environments that can be used to support online communities. We will then examine the features of two popular freeware bulletin board systems in detail and report on our experience of using these systems. We will also review architectures for a few well-known commercial environments. Benefits: You will learn about currently available software and what it is like to develop online communities using these systems. Lunch Afternoon part 1: Developing and managing online communities. We will present a participatory community development method. Our method describes what to look out for when developing online communities, how to involve participants, guidelines for developing and managing successful online communities and heuristics for evaluating success. Benefits: You will learn about key issues in developing and managing online communities. Afternoon part 2: Special issues of concern for: health, education and business communities. Communities differ depending upon their goals. During the last part of the tutorial we will examine examples of health, education and business communities and we will analyze their differences in order to understand what makes each type successful. Benefits: You will learn how communities differ and how to design and manage different types of communities. Book: Online communities: Designing usability, supporting sociability (Preece, 2000) John Wiley & Sons, England: Chichester. Target Audience: We welcome practitioners and academics who seek a broad exposure to the practicalities of developing online communities. Brief Biographical Sketch: Jennifer Preece is a professor of information systems at UMBC. She researches and teaches online communities and human-computer interaction. Her research focuses on understanding the usability and sociability issues that contribute to the success of different types of online communities. Topics on which she is currently working include: empathy and trust, participation and lurking (i.e., non-posting), heuristics and tools for evaluating success. Jenny Preece has published widely and is author or co-author of 8 books including two recent ones: Preece, J., Rogers, Y. & Sharp, H. (2002) Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. www.id-book.com and Preece, J. (2000) Online communities: Designing usability, supporting sociability. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons. www.ifsm.umbc.edu/onlinecommunities Chadia Abras is a graduate student at UMBC. Her research focuses on developing usability and sociability heuristics to assess success in different types of online communities. A goal of this work is to develop metrics that determine success. Her work uses a community-centered development approach, assessing the usability and sociability of the site, selecting software to support online communities and evaluating the community through surveys, interviews and logging in order to determine success.